IBRARY 
 
 IIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 AN DIEGO 

 
 57+2- 
 
 Pi, 
 XX
 
 The Potter s Wheel
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE CURE OF SOULS. YALE LECTURES ON 
 PRACTICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 THE MIND OF THE MASTER. 
 
 Fifteenth Thousand. Crown 8vo, Gilt top, 6s. 
 
 THE UPPER ROOM. 
 
 Twenty-third Thousand. Cloth, is. 6d. 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW.
 
 The Tottefs Wheel 
 
 By John Wat son y M.A., D.D. 
 
 
 /&* C*. 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
 1897
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 TO 
 
 W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 
 
 WHO CONSTRAINED ME 
 TO WRITE
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 i. THE POTTER'S WHEEL .... i 
 
 II. DEPARTURES IN LIFE . . . . II 
 
 III. BROKEN HOMES 23 
 
 IV. LOSS OF GOODS 34 
 
 V. TRIALS OF FAITH 45 
 
 VI. MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE . . 55 
 
 VII. VEXATIOUS CHILDREN .... 66 
 
 VIII. OBSCURITY 77 
 
 IX. VANISHING ILLUSIONS .... 86 
 
 X. THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL ... 97 
 
 XI. THE VEILING OF THE SOUL . . . 107 
 
 XII. PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES . . . 117 
 
 XIII. THE WORLD-SORROW .... 127 
 
 XIV. THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL SUFFERING 137 
 XV. DEATH 154 
 
 XVI. OUR DEPARTED 164
 
 Ay, note that Potter's Wheel, 
 
 That metaphor ! and feel 
 Why Time spins fast, why passive lies our clay. . . . 
 
 He fixed thee 'mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance, 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, "would 'st fain arrest : 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 
 To give thy soul its bent, 
 Try thee and turn thee forth sufficiently impressed. 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra.
 
 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 IT is inevitable that a serious person should 
 some time or other be perplexed by the 
 ordering of Providence and ask bitter 
 questions. This may be the best of all 
 possible worlds to people who do not think 
 and have never felt. But to their neigh- 
 bours it often seems unjustly and foolishly 
 governed. Why should one man be handi- 
 capped by hereditary disease of body or a 
 worse hereditary taint of soul, so that he has 
 to fight against odds all his days, while 
 another starts with a superb constitution 
 and an accumulated capital of virtue ? Why 
 should a man of dull and unimaginative 
 nature be endowed with riches, so that he 
 can be surrounded with beauty, while one on 
 A
 
 2 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 whom has been bestowed the gift of vision 
 is imprisoned in a sordid environment. 
 Why should one child be brought up 
 among squalor and vice, so that meanness 
 soaks into the pores of his soul, and another 
 have every advantage of fair circumstances 
 and religious training ? Why should calamity 
 of one kind or another hang over some 
 families from year to year, while on others 
 the sun seems ever to be shining? Why 
 should evil have been allowed at all, and 
 pain and dying? One were either blind 
 or callous if he did not ask such questions, 
 and wait anxiously for some kind of answer. 
 This answer will depend in the last issue 
 on the person's religious standpoint, but 
 both faith and unbelief agree that we are in 
 the hands of an Almighty Power. Some 
 power there surely is which from age to 
 age has been moulding the life of the Race 
 and of each individual, unseen, mysterious, 
 potent, against which we dash ourselves 
 in vain. Unbelief can only call it Fate a 
 combination of social and physical laws
 
 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 3 
 
 which have no mind and no heart, which 
 act blindly and unconsciously. Faith calls 
 it God, a living, active, personal Being, 
 who forms and fulfils His purposes after 
 the good pleasure of His will. Accord- 
 ing to the strenuous and austere habit of 
 Jewish thought, whose first idea was the 
 greatness of God, He is the Potter and we 
 are the clay, and as for the innumerable 
 and inexplicable circumstances of life, they 
 are simply the whirling wheel on which the 
 clay is changed and shaped till the Potter's 
 design is finally accomplished. This is the 
 Bible philosophy of life. 
 
 This doctrine of Providence lays a good 
 foundation for religion, and is an immense 
 gain over unbelief. Perhaps one of the most 
 awful and hopeless thoughts which can 
 possess the human mind is that we are all 
 caught in the moving wheels of a huge 
 machine, which has no hand to control it, and 
 goes on relentlessly of its own accord. It 
 were terrible to be stretched on a rack whose 
 cords were tightened at the command of an
 
 4 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 inquisitor; but it were ten thousand times 
 worse if the mechanism was automatic arid 
 uncontrolled. Even an inquisitor hath flesh 
 and blood, but this iron monster, to it there 
 is no appeal, in it no pity : one may be 
 discouraged and baffled by the ways of Pro- 
 vidence, but one knows that the Power which 
 has us at its mercy can see and hear us, and 
 is wise and righteous. If the wheel whirls 
 with our poor lives upon it, there is a hand 
 to check and guide it. 
 
 Perhaps the first lesson to be learned from 
 the absolute government of God, is submis- 
 sion. We are apt to be contentious, rebel- 
 lious, self-assertive and insolent. We com- 
 plain of ill-treatment in the world: we 
 think we have an action against some one : 
 we would sit in judgment on God Himself. 
 This bitter and querulous state of mind is 
 bad for our character, and hinders peace of 
 life. It would be good for us Westerns, with 
 our independence, irreverence, and restless- 
 ness, to be touched with the spirit whereby 
 the Jew, and no less the Mohammedan,
 
 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 5 
 
 realised the sovereignty of God. God is 
 great, and it is not for us to resist: God 
 knows all, and it is not for us to criticise. 
 We are His creatures, and are at His disposal: 
 we understand less of His plans than the 
 dumb unreasoning animal under our roof 
 does of ours. Has He sent good ? Blessed 
 be God. Does He send evil ? Blessed be 
 God. What else can we say? We are the 
 clay and He is the Potter. 
 
 This faith yields a more gracious lesson, 
 for it is charged with comfort. If God be 
 to us as a potter with his clay, then no 
 one's life can be the play of chance, but 
 must be the result of design. As before 
 the workman's mind the image of the 
 vessel ever stands when as yet there is 
 nothing but a handful of clay, so before 
 the vision of God the soul of His creature 
 appears complete and perfect, while to the 
 man himself and others that soul is shape- 
 less and unformed. Within the Divine mind 
 therefore lieth not only the idea of the 
 whole universe, but also the idea of each
 
 6 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 individual, and as history slowly evolves 
 from the mind of God so also does each 
 life proceed from the same mind. Each man 
 both his soul and his life is a calculated 
 work of God, to whose completion the 
 wisdom and power of God will be devoted. 
 And we know the unchanging and eternal 
 model before the Divine Worker's eye, and 
 on which everything coming from His hand 
 is shaped. The vessel may be large or 
 small, it may be of finer or coarser stuff, 
 but it is intended to be after the fashion of 
 Jesus Christ. Amid the innumerable forms 
 of imperfection, spoiled or in process, amid 
 the confusion and the disasters of life, the 
 excellent image of Christ remains as the 
 type and end of our Race. 
 
 One also is filled with hope at the figure 
 of the clay, because it suggests the immense 
 and unimagined possibilities of human 
 nature. Upon first sight how poor a thing 
 is this man, with his ignorances, prejudices, 
 pettinesses, his envy, jealousy, evil temper. 
 Upon second thoughts, how much may be
 
 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 7 
 
 in this man, how much he may achieve, 
 how high he may attain. This dull and 
 unattractive man must not be despised, 
 whether he be yourself or another : he is 
 incalculable and unfathomable. He is 
 simply raw material, soul stuff, and one can 
 no more anticipate him than you could 
 foresee a Turner from the master's colours 
 some of them very strange or a Persian rug 
 from a heap of wool. Out of that un- 
 promising face, that sleeping intellect, those 
 awkward ways, this crust of selfishness and 
 a hundred faults, is going to be made a 
 man whom the world will admire and 
 honour. 
 
 And one can now understand the function 
 of those circumstances which perplex and 
 try us. They are the rough, unsightly, but 
 most skilful and adaptable machinery by 
 which God changes a lump of clay into a 
 vessel fit for the finest service. No instru- 
 ment has ever created character, neither 
 books nor influence of friends, like the play 
 of life with God's Hand holding the vessel.
 
 8 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 A person standing by can see the obedient 
 sentient material respond taking its ap- 
 pointed proportions and gracious lines, here 
 expanding, there retiring, here bearing the 
 strokes which cut deep to create beauty, 
 there being hardly pressed to remove rough- 
 ness. Men had never been made in Eden, 
 in ease, quietness, innocence : they come 
 to their height in struggle, agonies, tempta- 
 tations, dangers, reverses. The descent of 
 Moses from a prince to a shepherd and his 
 often thankless labours have given him the 
 second place to Christ in the history of the 
 world. Without his shameful sin and 
 passion David had not written the fifty-first 
 Psalm. Had St. Paul remained a contented 
 Pharisee in Jerusalem instead of being 
 persecuted through the Roman Empire we 
 had not been reading his Epistles to-day. 
 The lonely martyrdom of the Beloved 
 Apostle cleansed the eyes of his soul and St. 
 John saw the heavenly city. It is with rough 
 and often cruel tools that the Potter achieves 
 the likeness of Christ in a human soul.
 
 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 9 
 
 Two conditions are required in the con- 
 scious human clay, with its wealth of emotion 
 and power of choice. One is an under- 
 standing of the Divine purpose, which is our 
 holiness. This world with its fiery tempta- 
 tions, its searching trials, its awful mysteries, 
 its passing illusions, its wholesome disap- 
 pointments, its unsatisfying rewards, its subtle 
 suggestions of the unseen, its sudden revela- 
 tions of the spiritual, is the best of means for 
 the creation of sainthood which is the free 
 choice of God beyond all other treasures. 
 What a wise and good world it has been for 
 the soul we shall only know on the other 
 side, when we have the after look and God's 
 plan is accomplished. Here we are looking 
 at the vessel in the rough, there we shall see 
 it when the Potter has perfected the work 
 of His hands. 
 
 And the other condition is that we love, 
 for only in the atmosphere of love can the 
 Divine operations have their full course and 
 succeed. If we be distrustful and rebellious, 
 ever suspecting and complaining of God,
 
 io THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 then not even His touch can beautify our 
 souls. We shall be as foolish headstrong 
 children whom no wise and kindly chas- 
 tisements can help, whom they only em- 
 bitter and disfigure. He only is plastic 
 material for the Potter, who is filled with 
 amazement that God should think of him 
 and with gratitude that God should take 
 such trouble with him : who sees in every 
 touch of gentle severity another proof of His 
 patience, and who continually beseeches God 
 not to cease until His Love be satisfied.
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 
 
 PERHAPS Hebrew literature, with its unsus- 
 pected tendernesses and winsome simplici- 
 ties, does not afford a more felicitous figure 
 than the comparison of the changes God is 
 pleased to send upon His children to an 
 eagle stirring up the nest in which her 
 young are resting. With instinctive wisdom 
 the mother bird has chosen a ledge where 
 the home can be built safe from intrusion 
 and alarms ; with laborious effort she shapes 
 it stick by stick, padding the hardness with 
 plumage from her own breast. The eaglets 
 are brought forth in the fastness of the ever- 
 lasting rocks ; they are kept beneath the 
 shelter of their mother's wings. Day by 
 
 day she poes forth into the unknown to get 
 
 11
 
 12 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 their food, and they open wide their mouths 
 as she returns. While the young birds are 
 still helpless, the eagle does everything for 
 them : as they grow and their wings gather 
 strength, she invites them to fly. It is 
 natural that they should be afraid to launch 
 into that awful depth with their untried 
 pinions. While a nest remaineth they will 
 never dare to fly, and therefore so the 
 story goes the mother deliberately wrecks 
 her own labour of love till it lies in ruins, 
 and the fledglings have no shelter on the 
 windy height. She then allures them into 
 the air making short flights by way of 
 example, and safeguarding them beneath 
 with her wings. Driven from their security 
 and tempted into the blue, the young eagles 
 make their great venture. 
 
 Very tenderly and very carefully does our 
 Father prepare for His children an environ- 
 ment in this life, that at no time we may 
 be defenceless. One nest after another is 
 built out of many circumstances, all touched 
 and softened by the Divine Love ; from the
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 13 
 
 beautiful world into which we are born, to 
 the house that a hundred sacred associations 
 have made home. We settle down in each 
 nest with a sense of rest and finality, and 
 have no wish to risk ourselves in the depths 
 outside our little life. Left to ourselves we 
 had never cherished any spiritual ambition ; 
 we had never wished to use our wings. But 
 Providence, sometimes by rude shocks, 
 sometimes by gentler compulsions, dislodges 
 us from our place and casts us forth where 
 we must fly or be dashed to pieces. The 
 great changes of life are moments of 
 supreme adventure, when we bid good- 
 bye to the homes which, with a hundred 
 familiar surroundings, bid us stay and com- 
 mit ourselves to the unknown, with its 
 depths below and its heights above. Every 
 new departure is an abandonment of 
 security : it is an expedition into an un- 
 explored and mysterious region. It is a 
 venture of the soul. 
 
 Changes are one of the surest means for 
 bracing and quickening character. Within
 
 14 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 the bounds of uneventful and secured cir- 
 cumstances, where from childhood to old 
 age life flows evenly, smoothly, slowly, with 
 no rapids, no pools, no rocks, a type of 
 character is formed which is not without 
 beauty. It is gentle, tender, thoughtful, 
 but it cannot be strong. Where life has 
 had its emergencies, its agonies, its sur- 
 prises, its speculations, it has its highest 
 possibilities. When men have put forth 
 from the shore in search of a new world, 
 when they have staked their all upon a 
 new enterprise, when they have faced a 
 revolution in life, they grow resolute and 
 strenuous. It was his emigration from his 
 father's house into an unknown country 
 that brought Abraham to his height. The 
 crisis in Moses' career was his surrender 
 of princely luxury and his identification of 
 himself with a horde of slaves. A handful 
 of Jewish peasants have changed the face 
 of the world, because there was in them 
 the heart to answer the call o'f Jesus. No 
 one can ever imagine what power may be
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 15 
 
 lying unused and hidden till a man is driven 
 off his ledge, where he has been fed and 
 warmed, without fear and without thought. 
 Do not judge him while he has only fluttered 
 his wings at the coming of food ; wait till he 
 stretches them to go up to heaven. It is in the 
 throes of a revolution a nation comes to birth: 
 it is in the moment of change the soul awakes. 
 Among the various changes in ordinary 
 life four are conspicuous, and the first comes 
 when one leaves home for the first time, and 
 makes his plunge into the world. It does 
 not matter very much whether he is going 
 to a public school or to business in a great 
 city : he is beginning life on his own account. 
 As the day draws near a day no one can 
 ever forget, when he passes out of the old 
 homestead for the first time there is a 
 tumult in the heart. The unspeakable privi- 
 leges of a good home the daily oversight, 
 the spoken advice, the kindly offices, the 
 sense of protection, the warmth of love 
 suddenly arise before the memory, and are 
 appreciated to the full, just as they are about
 
 16 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 to be lost. The vague dangers of the new 
 life, its strange faces, unaccustomed duties, 
 lonely circumstances, unexpected tempta- 
 tions, possible hostilities, powerfully affect 
 the imagination and darken the future. The 
 lad does his best to show a smiling face, for 
 the sake of those whom he is leaving, and he 
 recognises that this outgoing is inevitable, 
 but there would be something wrong with 
 him if his heart did not sink and his eyes 
 were not dashed with tears at the turn of 
 the road. These emigrations are very trying 
 for those who go and those who stay, but 
 both live to appreciate their purpose. Within 
 a few years, and not without a few humilia- 
 tions, the raw, unformed lad changes into 
 a man, with a sense of responsibility, with 
 serious views of life, with a knowledge of 
 affairs, with brave plans of service. It had 
 been a cruel kindness to save him from this 
 experience : it is a happy condition of things 
 after all that sends us forth from the best of 
 Edens on our ' wander-year.' 
 Another momentous change, and one
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 17 
 
 whose effect on character is greatly over- 
 looked, is marriage. It will ever remain a 
 chief mystery of human experience, that at 
 the sight of a face and the sound of a voice 
 which yesterday were strange, or rather at 
 the vision of a soul, and the sense of a pre- 
 established harmony, a whole life will be 
 turned upside down. A new-born passion, 
 joyful, masterful, inspiring, seizes the nature, 
 and in a day eclipses the affections of youth, 
 and erases the plans of early manhood as if 
 they had never been made, so that one could 
 leave father and mother, could change even 
 his country and his calling. No words can 
 appraise the suddenness and sway of love, 
 before which prudence and selfishness yield 
 and vanish. It is natural that literature 
 should give a solitary place to love among 
 the motives of life ; it is amazing that ordi- 
 nary people never seem to take love at its 
 full value. Surely there can be no doubt 
 that, excluding certain profound religious 
 experiences given to few, love is the most 
 irresistible force in the story of the indi- 
 B
 
 i8 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 vidual, and marriage the most dominant 
 event. For two human beings to enter into 
 this unreserved and irrevocable relationship 
 with its committal of body and soul, of joy 
 and peace, of all life's labour and ideals, into 
 one another's hands, is a supreme act of 
 trust and a last risk. A divine instinct calls 
 us, and is justified in the end. Some lives 
 may be broken in this flight, or done to 
 death in black chasms of suffering and 
 shame, but for most marriage becomes a 
 perfect discipline of character. Thoughtful 
 and serious people come nearer still to the 
 heart of things, and see the veil lifted from 
 the mysteries of being. Careless and 
 frivolous people are solemnised by an im- 
 mense responsibility and are deepened by 
 an unselfish passion. No experience will 
 teach the lesson of sacrifice so successfully, 
 none invest it with such charm. The laws of 
 life have many exceptions, and some choice 
 souls have come into their full estate in soli- 
 tude ; but for most this daring experiment 
 has been the crown of life.
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 19 
 
 The third change is more prosaic, and yet 
 in its way very trying and very influential, 
 and it is shifting one's home. After one has 
 lived for some time in the same place, he 
 acquires a feeling of permanence. He has 
 grown into his house till it fits him like a 
 shell ; he has completed a circle of friends 
 who among them afford all he needs ; he 
 has fitted the routine of the day to particular 
 hours, to a certain road, to various ex- 
 pedients ; he has a pew in church, where 
 alone he can enjoy a sermon ; he has found 
 a piece of work that is suited to his powers. 
 Here he has lived, here he expects to live, 
 and here he expects to die. In fact, he is in 
 a nest, and one sees him every year snug- 
 gling down into its comfort with great con- 
 tent, when, perhaps without any warning, he 
 is sent forth. Another environment, with a 
 new house, new faces, new customs, a new 
 church, is no light trial to any man above 
 middle age. Why should Providence, which 
 fitted up this home so mindfully not have 
 left me in it till I changed into the house not
 
 20 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 made with hands ? Very likely because the 
 change will vivify and renew the soul, as a 
 visit to foreign parts quickens the intellect 
 which has grown jaded and commonplace. 
 A new voice may give a new evangel. 
 Breaking up conventionalities may lay the 
 mind open to fresh ideas. A variety of 
 service may afford the opportunity for in- 
 spiration. The change may be into a wider 
 place, where the wind of God blows as it 
 listeth round the soul nothing between. 
 
 Some changes can be avoided whether 
 for good or ill is another matter ; but one 
 awaiteth us all, when the whole circumstances 
 of this life shall be shattered in a moment, 
 and, willing or not willing, every one of us 
 shall go forth into the unseen. This is' the 
 final venture of the soul, and a most tender 
 Providence prepares us for it by many hints 
 and warnings. A sharp illness, some failing 
 of mind, a general decay, or the departure 
 of a friend, are all a loosening of the nest 
 and a command to be ready for flight. What 
 an outgoing it is, over the brink, where we
 
 DEPARTURES IN LIFE 21 
 
 can see nothing below or above, where we can 
 feel nothing under our feet ! Is it cowardly 
 for the average person to tremble at this 
 last emigration this departure into an un- 
 tried and vacant abyss ? Yet let us not lose 
 heart or be unfaithful. A great abyss it is, 
 as if one should cast himself from the height 
 of a precipice into the air. But it is not un 
 tried, for with every change from childhood 
 an excursion has been attempted into the 
 unknown. It was only a flutter on the edge, 
 but still it proved that we had wings, and we 
 came back to our resting-place unhurt and 
 undismayed. This time we shall not return ; 
 our wings will have to serve us longer. And 
 the abyss is not empty, for never have we 
 gone out in any journey of the soul but God 
 was with us, guiding us when we had no 
 longer our earthly father, revealing Himself 
 through the sacrament of human love, dwell- 
 ing where we dwell, as with the pilgrim 
 patriarchs. The hands that curiously con- 
 structed this kindly nest are the same that 
 will take it down. The wings which covered
 
 22 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 us in our callow childhood here will bear us 
 up out yonder. The God who is here, is 
 there and everywhere. The wide and open 
 space is full of sunlight, and underneath our 
 souls for ever shall be the everlasting arms.
 
 BROKEN HOMES 
 
 THE providence of God never presses more 
 sorely upon the heart, nor raises harder ques- 
 tions in the mind, than when His servant 
 Death knocks at the door of some uncon- 
 scious contented home, and summons an 
 unlikely member across the threshold. We 
 have no quarrel with the kindly office of 
 the dark angel, and would not desire that 
 he should delay his coming beyond the 
 time, since many years without strength are 
 only sorrow and humiliation. It is better 
 that the ripe fruit should be plucked before 
 it begins to decay upon the tree, and the 
 golden corn reaped before it runs to waste. 
 Nothing can be more fitting and seemly 
 than the departure of one whose work has 
 
 23
 
 24 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 been well finished, and who has reached the 
 evening of his day. What appears utter 
 unreason and cruelty a mere caprice or 
 blunder of Providence is the removal of 
 the head of a family in the midst of riis 
 days, or a house-mother whose deserted 
 children follow her to the door, or a young 
 child in the fresh promise of spring. Is 
 not this the wilful wrecking of love's long 
 labour? For a home is a beautiful work 
 which is slowly created ; it is a perfect 
 unity whose injury cannot be repaired. 
 Why should two people be moved of the 
 Divine Spirit to love, only to be separated 
 after a few years ? Why should children be 
 given only to be taken ? Why should a 
 home be enriched with a wealth of tender 
 associations, and in a little while the inhabi- 
 tants sit lonely in its desolation, listening 
 for a footstep that will never be heard on 
 the stair again, wearying for a voice that is 
 still ? 
 
 When a person in such straits is con- 
 cerned about the goodness of God, his
 
 BROKEN HOMES 25 
 
 anxious questions are not to be condemned 
 as a sign of unbelief, but are rather to be 
 welcomed as a fruit of faith. If one does 
 not believe in his heart that there is any 
 God, or at least quite despairs of knowing 
 Him, then he is not likely to vex himself 
 about the divine character. No circum- 
 stances can either make God better or 
 worse, any more than if he were an idea in 
 a book. If, however, one has learned to put 
 all his trust in God, and God has become 
 the portion of his soul, then he cannot help 
 being very jealous about His honour. 
 Any act which suggests carelessness or 
 cruelty on the part of God is an unspeak- 
 able and irredeemable calamity. Leave 
 God untouched in His wisdom and love, 
 and the pious soul can bear many afflictions, 
 for at the worst it can hide itself in Him 
 who is the soul's refuge and help in time 
 of trouble. Without God and if God be 
 unworthy of trust there is no God tribu- 
 lation is another name for destruction. The 
 vindication of God is the first thought of
 
 26 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 faith in face of trial, and we are never in- 
 clined to judge our Father more harshly 
 than when standing amid the ruins of a 
 home. 
 
 Before trying to find reasons for the 
 divine action, it is always well to remind 
 ourselves how little we know about any- 
 thing, and how very unlikely it is that we 
 shall know much more till we get the after- 
 look. We are the victims of the present and 
 the imperfect, seeing only processes, not 
 ends, understanding only a part, not the 
 whole. We should never have imagined 
 this fair earth, had it been given us to see 
 fire and water labouring like blind and 
 chaotic forces at its making, and it is at 
 least as impossible to anticipate what 
 gracious products of human character may 
 result from what seems in our day the con- 
 fused and senseless agonies of life. What 
 we are alone able to see is the carving of the 
 stone, with the dust and broken splinters, 
 the wrong side of the web, with its tangle 
 of threads, the molten metal poured from
 
 BROKEN HOMES 27 
 
 crucible to crucible. Each generation lives 
 amid the machinery which is making souls, 
 and the individual must be patient when he 
 fails to understand its whirling wheels and 
 sharp-edged tools. The past with its golden 
 record of conspicuous successes corrects our 
 hasty judgments ; the future with its incal- 
 culable possibilities bids us hope. When 
 the day is over and the work is done it will 
 be soon enough to judge the government of 
 the Eternal. 
 
 Meanwhile one must be very unobservant 
 of life and very unintelligent about its 
 meaning if he cannot see some spiritual 
 ends and some kindly alleviations even in 
 these sudden and crushing blows that 
 shatter happy homes. It does certainly 
 seem wanton to call away a father who is 
 not only the bread-winner but also the 
 councillor of a family, at the very time when 
 his example and influence will mostly tell ; 
 or a mother while her children are still 
 young and chiefly need her sympathy, her 
 care, her love. The loss is so irreparable
 
 28 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 that we do not reckon the compensations. 
 Is there any relation so fond on the one 
 side, so chivalrous on the other, as that 
 between a widowed mother and her loyal 
 sons? Can there be found any one more 
 thoughtful, more protecting, more tender- 
 hearted than a man who has to be both 
 father and mother to his children? If 
 marriage be the normal state for the vast 
 majority of men and women, its sad eclipse 
 has often called into exercise the most 
 gentle and winsome virtues, has afforded the 
 opportunity for the most affectionate and 
 thoughtful services. 
 
 When one comes to the loss of young 
 children a sad perplexity let it not be 
 forgotten that they were given. If in the 
 hour of bitterest grief it were asked of a 
 bereaved mother whether she would prefer 
 never to have possessed in order that she 
 might never have lost her heart would be 
 very indignant. No little child has ever 
 come from God and stayed a brief while in 
 some human home to return again to the
 
 BROKEN HOMES 29 
 
 Father without making glad that home 
 and leaving behind some trace of heaven. 
 A family had counted themselves poorer 
 without those quaint sayings, those cunning 
 caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. 
 This short visit was not an incident : it was 
 a benediction. The child departs, the re- 
 membrances, the influence, the associations 
 remain. If one should allow us to have 
 Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would 
 thank him : when he resumed it for his 
 home he would not take everything, for its 
 loveliness of maid and angel is now ours 
 for ever. And if God recalls the child He 
 lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and 
 consider that what made that child the 
 messenger of God its purity, modesty, 
 trustfulness, gladness has passed into our 
 soul. 
 
 Is it not the case also in many instances 
 that death has been a merciful escape for 
 children grievously smitten in body or 
 mind ? No child calls forth so much tender 
 solicitude, none is so fondly loved, as one
 
 30 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 afflicted ; none is held more firmly, for none 
 are more prayers offered. If it lay in the 
 will of the parents they would never consent 
 to its removal, so wonderfully do helpless- 
 ness and suffering appeal to the heart. 
 With a just parent there is only one ground 
 of partiality weakness ; only one child 
 that has more than its share of love the 
 invalid. Yet is it not an unconscious and 
 cruel selfishness of love that would wish 
 for that child a prolonged hospital life ? Is 
 it not a merciful release when the prisoner 
 escapes from the bondage of this body, and 
 enters on the fulness of life, where there is 
 no more pain ? 
 
 There are worse evils than pain of body, 
 from which death gives immunity ; and no 
 one can look at the innocent face of a little 
 child that has fallen on sleep without thank- 
 ing God for victory before the battle. One 
 at least of God's children has been spared 
 the risk of temptation, the bitterness of 
 defeat, the sore struggle after perfection. 
 What an uncertainty is the life before an
 
 BROKEN HOMES 31 
 
 infant in its mother's arms. What sin and 
 shame may be its experience ere all be over. 
 Has no father ever declared, with a heart 
 broken by some Absalom, ' Would that he 
 had died in his childhood ' ? Is it not good 
 that some of our race should have but 
 one chapter in their short lives here, and 
 is it to be desired that all should have 
 page upon page that none but God must 
 see, that nothing but Christ's blood can 
 cleanse ? 
 
 Death must always be a dreaded visitor 
 to any house, and it is hard to forgive his 
 robberies, but he leaves behind many peace- 
 able fruits. For instance, a certain serious- 
 ness of thought and feeling that are not 
 easily learned. People who are strong and 
 busy and successful and glad who have 
 never been chastened in their hearts are 
 apt to take shallow and trifling views of life. 
 They do not see clearly because of the glare 
 of sunshine in the room, so that they might 
 pass a Crucifixion without notice. Life is 
 but a pleasant day a pastoral, with song
 
 32 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and dancing. By and by one blind after 
 another is drawn down, till the light grows 
 grey and sombre, and the Christ upon His 
 Cross looks out from the shadow. The 
 deeps of life are opened with their solemni- 
 ties, their realities, their tragedies. The 
 character loses its light grace, its gay 
 delight in the comedy of existence; but 
 it gains instead an understanding of the 
 inwardness of things and the responsibilities 
 of the soul. 
 
 Family bereavement also works a singular 
 and beautiful gentleness that can be de- 
 tected almost without fail in the expression 
 of the eye in the tone of the voice. Some 
 of the best wine is harsh and unpalatable 
 till it goes a long sea voyage. After it 
 has been tossed on the high seas and gone 
 round the Cape, it becomes mellow and 
 soft. There are strong natures which were 
 once intolerable ; they were so self-con- 
 fident, so masterful, so inhuman. But Death 
 visited their house, and they came forth 
 from his school other men, and now the
 
 BROKEN HOMES 33 
 
 strength is touched with sympathy and 
 humility. Such men become the saviours 
 of the world with Christ, for it is doubtful 
 whether any man has ever helped his 
 fellows in the high affairs of life who has 
 not tasted sorrow. 
 
 And Death is a very successful teacher 
 of that faith we all long to possess ; the 
 conviction of the Unseen. We may play 
 with the arguments against another life 
 when our affections are neutral, and may 
 even pretend that the case is not proven. 
 Let one of our flesh and blood bid us 
 good-bye and pass within the veil, and 
 reason surrenders the place to love. A 
 young child with Christ does more to illu- 
 minate the other world than all the books 
 that ever have been written, and it has often 
 come to pass that at the touch of this un- 
 seen hand hard and sceptical men have 
 arisen and set their faces towards God, for 
 the hope of seeing again a golden head on 
 which the sun was ever shining.
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 
 
 WITH most people annuitants and 
 Government pensioners are perhaps the 
 only exceptions an unexpected reverse in 
 circumstances must be taken into account 
 as one of the possible incidents of life ; and 
 it is harder to bear than the victim is in- 
 clined to confess, or than his neighbours 
 ever suspect. A brave man shows a good 
 face for the time, and makes light of the 
 blow it is, he declares, but the fortune of 
 war. Friends surround him with assurances 
 of sympathy it is, they suggest, only a 
 disguised success. Both sides make an 
 admirable rally, and give one a better 
 idea of human nature ; but such backsets 
 are not joyful but grievous. When a pro- 
 
 34
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 35 
 
 fessional man has given his best brains to 
 his work and is ungratefully treated, or a 
 clerk has slaved for a firm and is dismissed 
 for the sake of petty economy, or a servant 
 has put the family's interests before her own 
 and is made an offender for a word, or a 
 merchant accumulates a competency and 
 sees it scattered by some speculator, it does 
 seem as if the times were out of joint, 
 and the heart of the sufferer is apt to grow 
 bitter. What reward has principle, faith- 
 fulness, industry, loyalty? Is there no 
 intelligible law in the moral world, but only 
 a whimsical Providence which changes a 
 man's wheat into tares, between the seed- 
 time and harvest ? 
 
 Loss of goods is a very fair illustration of 
 this kind of trial, and is treated too lightly 
 by persons who have not lost any or never 
 had any to lose. There are, of course, dis- 
 tinctions between cases, and sympathy is 
 sometimes out of place. If one has lost a 
 fraction of the fortune he does not know 
 what to do with, and is only anxious to
 
 36 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 increase, then it is not uncharitable to refuse 
 him pity, or cruel to congratulate him on a 
 wholesome bloodletting. Fewer goods may 
 mean less care for him, less worldliness for 
 his wife, happier because truer marriages for 
 his daughters, more strenuous lives for his 
 sons, a higher level of life for the whole 
 family. But if a man be cast down because 
 yesterday he was rich and to-day he is poor, 
 one who has a wife and children, then let no 
 person despise or belittle him as selfish, or 
 mercenary, or worldly, or unspiritual. You 
 are not entitled to judge him unless you 
 have either made a sacrifice of your posses- 
 sions for some great cause, or have taken 
 joyfully the spoiling of your goods ; and if 
 you have passed through such experiences 
 they will have taught you charity. No man 
 need be thought an unworthy Christian be- 
 cause a worldly reverse adds ten years to 
 his age or writes its mark on his brow. 
 
 Various reasons may be imagined for his 
 concern besides disappointed avarice, and 
 one may be a sense of injustice. The
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 37 
 
 activity of life is largely based on the law 
 of work and its reward. It is a perfectly 
 honest instinct which resents the idea of 
 labouring a long day and getting no wages 
 in the evening. This is not a question of 
 selfishness at all, it is a question of righteous- 
 ness. The one who has been refused his 
 right is injured, the one who wronged him is 
 a rascal. If there be any manhood in the 
 worker he will insist on his wage although 
 he give it away next minute, and if he fail 
 to get it the Bible will express his indigna- 
 tion with power. Suppose he accumulates a 
 sum from his earnings as a support in old 
 age or a provision for his family, and he be 
 robbed of it by the strong hand of a merci- 
 less firm, or the reckless operations of an 
 unscrupulous speculator, or the rascality of 
 a gang of public swindlers, or the deliberate 
 deceit of a trusted friend, then he has been 
 spoiled of his just possessions, and he does 
 well to be angry. When an industrious and 
 well-doing man is plundered without redress 
 it will be a marvel if he be not bitter.
 
 38 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 Loss of wealth may also be regretted 
 because wealth was the means of securing 
 pure and ennobling pleasures. Money has 
 a different value with different men, and is 
 indeed a symbol for what we chiefly love or 
 need. With some it may mean meat and 
 drink and clothing and luxuries, which 
 things come to sloth, pride, and extrava- 
 gance. With others it signifies so many 
 books written by the prophets of the 
 Eternal, so many pictures by the inter- 
 preters of the Unseen. With certain others 
 money is the instrument of goodness by 
 which they relieve men in straits, provide 
 for widows left comfortless, educate poor 
 boys of intelligence, and bring some bright- 
 ness into the lives of poor people. Money 
 is neither culture nor charity it may be the 
 enemy of both ; but it can create an atmo- 
 sphere in which mind and heart will come 
 to their flower. Any man is to be envied 
 who can feed the purest tastes and obey the 
 kindliest instincts as he pleases, to whom no 
 treasure in vellum is forbidden, no generous
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 39 
 
 succour of the needy is impossible ; and if 
 one is exiled suddenly from this goodly 
 Eden, then he is to be pitied and has cause 
 of complaint. 
 
 It would be an injustice, however, to con- 
 clude that a true man will ever be much 
 cast down by straitened circumstances if he 
 be alone in the world. He is perfectly aware 
 that any one, sane in soul, mind, and body, 
 can always earn his living, and that a touch 
 of hardness will only brace his soul. But he 
 is perpetually concerned about the future 
 comfort of those whom he loves and who 
 have trusted him. Money-making has two 
 sides : one is very ignoble, where an im- 
 mortal being toils and scrapes and grasps 
 and hoards, simply that he may possess : 
 one is entirely noble, where one strives that 
 he may provide. What heroism may be 
 hidden behind buying and selling, bargain- 
 ing and speculating! Where a weary, 
 anxious man is ever thinking of a woman 
 who must not know want, of boys who must 
 have their chance in life, one forgives him his 

 
 40 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 carefulness, his keenness, his rashness, since 
 all he does is for love's sake ; and one under- 
 stands that his suffering through a reverse 
 has not in it a single grain of selfishness. 
 
 This man is, however, fortunate in retain- 
 ing one possession, for loss of goods is not 
 loss of honour. He may have to go into a 
 smaller house, to practise various economies, 
 to withdraw certain subscriptions, to refuse 
 his family some pleasures ; but he does not 
 need to lower his head at the meeting of 
 a friend. Nor will his children have cause 
 to be ashamed of their father's name. There 
 are men on whom the sun has shone, and 
 who are increased in goods, yet none re- 
 spect them. Most honest souls despise 
 them. Their fortunes would be a cheap 
 price for this man's character, but that 
 cannot be bought by gold, nor is it lost 
 when gold departs. After all, it is not 
 required of every one to be successful either 
 in his business or in his profession in letters 
 or the Church. What is asked, and eternally 
 shall be asked, is that a man shall obey his
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 41 
 
 conscience, and do his duty by God and his 
 neighbour. Has he done so according to 
 his ability ? Then, be his lot prosperity or 
 adversity, let him keep a high heart, for 
 none can put him to shame, either in this 
 world or the next. 
 
 Adversity will also be helpless to deprive 
 him of the love of wife or child, but by a 
 blessed law of human hearts will only make 
 him dearer. Does a woman think less of 
 her husband because he has been worsted in 
 the battle, and has been sent out of the lists 
 wounded ? She is so fashioned by God that 
 she will claim her knight before the people 
 and glory in him, and lavish hitherto un- 
 known riches of love on him, and be prouder 
 of him than if he had come off victor over 
 all opponents. Why? For a woman's 
 reason : because he is not strong and success- 
 ful ; because he has failed, and therefore has 
 need of sympathy and comfort and con- 
 fidence. For another woman's reason : be- 
 cause he failed for her, so that every wound 
 has become an evidence of his devotion, a
 
 42 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 claim on her loyalty. What a love is that 
 which God hath placed in the heart of a 
 woman so magnanimous, so ungrudging, 
 so forgiving, so steadfast. Is there any man 
 living who has ever fathomed that love, who 
 has ever lived so as to deserve it? Who 
 shall ever be able to repay it ? Dare a man 
 complain of any loss who knows that he has 
 the love of a good woman as his portion ? 
 
 Besides, adversity is a searching test of 
 friendship dividing the sheep from the 
 goats with unerring accuracy ; and this is a 
 good service. Times there are when it 
 seems we cannot count the number of our 
 friends we see so many smiling faces, we 
 hear so many pleasant words. Times 
 there are when we are not certain and 
 question our heart. Suppose one became 
 unpopular or held unworldly opinions, or 
 were reduced to poverty, or were slandered ; 
 how many of this agreeable crowd would 
 come out and take their places by his side 
 against the wall ? We ought not to expect 
 many. We may well be satisfied with six ;
 
 LOSS OF GOODS 43 
 
 and the one good of adversity is, that we 
 should discover for certain who the six are. 
 It might almost be worth enduring some 
 loss to know how much uncalculating and 
 unhesitating loyalty burns in some silent, 
 faithful, unflinching folk. 
 
 But among all the services of adversity 
 surely the best is this, that it teaches us at 
 last the difference between the goods that 
 are held in barns and those that are stored 
 in the soul. So alluring are the things 
 which are seen, that they fascinate our minds 
 and lead them captive ; so severe are the 
 things which are unseen, that they fail to 
 seize our imagination and inspire our lives. 
 We are blinded by the gaudy colours and 
 tinsel glory of the material, so that the 
 kingdom of God cannot compete for our 
 love. What advantages have the intangible 
 riches of the spiritual world that we should 
 win them at a sacrifice? Adversity gives 
 one answer they last. Vision, knowledge, 
 faith, love, holiness, cannot be taken from 
 one by a thief; they cannot be lost in a
 
 44 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 day ; they cannot ooze away before his eyes. 
 They are inalienable, and are never dearer, 
 surer, sweeter, than when all other posses- 
 sions have failed and disappeared. Does it 
 not too often happen that as people rise in 
 the social scale, their character deteriorates ? 
 They cast off old friends ; they lose their 
 former simplicity of manners ; they withdraw 
 from the service of Christ. They become 
 affected, hollow, ambitious before our eyes. 
 It is a law, with many a splendid exception, 
 that those who are rich are deaf to the voice 
 of Christ, and refuse His cross ; that those 
 who are poor give Him ready welcome and 
 accept His cross as the way of life ever 
 lasting.
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH 
 
 7 
 
 PERSONS familiar with the Vatican will 
 remember the little chapel of Nicholas V., 
 which opens out of the Constantine chamber, 
 and is a welcome refuge from the crowd of 
 curious sightseers. Beyond quietness and 
 the chastened light, its attraction is some ot 
 the finest work of Fra Angelico, which he 
 must have done on his last visit to Rome, 
 and not long before his death. He once 
 described himself as a monk who painted 
 for the love of God, and he was so lifted 
 above this world that he refused the See 
 of Florence. It strikes one that Angelico 
 was indeed very meet for the Heavenly 
 Kingdom when he made the walls of Pope 
 Nicholas' Chapel beautiful with the life of 
 
 45
 
 46 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 St. Stephen ; and there was a fitness that 
 his body should have been laid to rest in 
 that church, S. Maria sopra Minerva, whose 
 name is a parable of the triumph of faith 
 over learning. You cannot look on the face 
 of the first Christian martyr without realis- 
 ing a soul separate from the strife of this 
 present world and full of the peace of God. 
 There is not a shadow of doubt or of ques- 
 tioning on the countenances of Angelico's 
 saints. They are a picture of the age of 
 Faith. 
 
 Very different is the vast picture on the 
 altar wall of the Sistine Chapel which was 
 one of Michael Angelo's most elaborate 
 efforts, and has an awful fascination for 
 one's mind. The subject is the ' Last Judg- 
 ment,' and plunges you at once into another 
 world from that in which Angelico lived and 
 prayed and wrought. The scene is crowded 
 with figures contending together in mortal 
 conflict, or striving to make a vain ascent 
 from hell. Devils seize the saints and at- 
 tempt to pull them down, while angels come
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH 47 
 
 to their help. Above sits Christ in His 
 majesty, beneath are the open horrors of 
 hell. The dark and gloomy colours of the 
 background are made more ghastly by the 
 white of unclothed bodies. Very slowly can 
 you trace the details of the confused drama, 
 very hardly can you discover the painter's 
 idea. It is a work of agony and mystery, 
 the reflection of a mind wrestling with the 
 problem of life and history, of man and God. 
 The simplicity of faith has departed and 
 with it the serenity of the soul. Michael 
 Angelo's strenuous and forceful work belongs 
 to the age of doubt. 
 
 The parallel between the experience of 
 the race and the individual is very complete, 
 for he also has his age of faith, when it does 
 not occur to him to question, and it is 
 natural for him to believe. Across the 
 troubled seas of manhood one looks back 
 with wistful regret to the inland waters of 
 childhood in whose calm clear surface were 
 reflected the great mountains of God. We 
 stand again by our mother's knee, and in a
 
 48 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 picture-book, with linen pages, see St. Peter 
 drawing his net full of fishes, and look up on 
 a starry night to the place where heaven is, 
 and try to keep awake till Santa Claus 
 comes with his gifts. It is the age of 
 wonder when the world is peopled with 
 fairies, and our life with miracles ; when 
 every spoken word is true, and every prayer 
 is to be answered at once. God is good 
 if possible, better than our mother. Jesus 
 is by our side, and the Holy Angels. Our 
 sins are giants to be fought. We plan 
 achievements in the days to come. Like 
 plants that are protected from the storm, 
 we are learning to believe before the storm 
 of doubt bursts on us in the open, and 
 our heads are beaten for a little to the 
 ground. 
 
 Certain favoured people are planted out 
 by God's hand in such sheltered corners of 
 His garden that the wind sweeping over the 
 waste of moorland never touches them, and 
 the sun from all the quarters is ever blessing 
 them. With every year they know God
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH 49 
 
 better and are more firmly persuaded of His 
 love. Jesus' presence is more distinctly felt, 
 and the print of His feet grows clearer on 
 the ways of life. For them the miraculous 
 has no difficulties, since they have seen 
 greater works than those in their own ex- 
 perience, and the mysteries of faith are the 
 subject of their joyful meditation. Cross 
 providences do not disturb their hearts, 
 being only the signs of a Father's love, and 
 great sacrifices do not daunt them, being 
 only the opportunity for a new surrender 
 to the Divine Will. They are the pure in 
 heart who see God ; they are the meek who 
 inherit the earth who carry with them an 
 atmosphere of calm, in whose eyes Heaven 
 can be seen. They come down swiftly from 
 the sunlit hill of youth like Angelico from 
 Fiesole, and the ordinary affairs of life are 
 illuminated for them, as the bare cells of San 
 Marco glowed with his frescoes. They keep 
 the child-heart to the end unspoiled by the 
 world, unvexed by doubts, in whose beautiful 
 lives Christ is wonderfully commended. 
 D
 
 SO THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 'Who but a Christian through all life 
 
 That blessing may prolong ? 
 Who, through the world's sad day of strife, 
 Still chant his morning song ? ' 
 
 It is the will of our Father to deal after 
 another fashion with many of His children, 
 who may turn out to be the strongest of the 
 family in the day of their full manhood. 
 Like their Elder Brother they are carried 
 away into the wilderness and are tempted, 
 some for long seasons, some for short, some 
 once only, some at intervals all their life. 
 One has no measure of comparison for the 
 trials of life, but for souls of delicate temper 
 none can be more fiery than the trying of faith. 
 For it is faith which reinforces us in the sore 
 straits of life, and ministers to us our chief 
 consolations. It assures us of the love of God, 
 of the life beyond the grave, of the victory over 
 this present world, of the crown that shall be 
 given to the soul ; with the spell of faith so 
 many afflictions are made light, so many are 
 made acceptable ; heaven opens above our 
 head, this life is shot through with light. It
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH 51 
 
 matters little how rough be the road so long 
 as it stretches before us with some home at 
 its end, or how keen be the wind if the sun 
 be shining. When the track is lost on the 
 hill and the night falls, then one may be 
 excused if his heart fails also, and he is for a 
 space tempted to despair. 
 
 Various circumstances put faith on her 
 trial, and one of the most common is the 
 shattering of a hereditary creed. Very few 
 peopte indeed begin their religious life with 
 an open mind, going out each one to find the 
 new world for himself; and possessing it in 
 his own right. He rather succeeds to an 
 estate which some ancestor has won and 
 bequeathed to following generations. Our 
 opinions both in religion and politics are 
 largely an entail, so that we believe as our 
 fathers believed with considerable comfort 
 and assurance. If no one attacks this creed 
 we may be left in possession all our days and 
 be spared many perplexing questions. But 
 it is well to remember that the title to a 
 hereditary creed is very precarious and that
 
 52 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 our security may be roughly shaken. A 
 single sentence in a strange book has roused 
 the critical faculty and left the soul without 
 a spiritual roof above its head. When sus- 
 picion is once aroused there is no honest or 
 safe escape from the trial. One must go to 
 the bottom of the matter : one cannot rest 
 till he has verified his creed. It is the most 
 anxious work to which a man can put his 
 hand, but it has only to be done once, and 
 what remains is his own for ever. 
 
 Another trial of faith is rather physical 
 than spiritual, but is not to be despised on 
 that account. Quite suddenly bright and 
 courageous persons fall into gloom and sad- 
 ness of heart from which they can hardly be 
 raised. They are haunted by presentiments 
 of calamity, they are assailed by evil thoughts, 
 they consider themselves forsaken of God, 
 they despair of goodness. Very likely the 
 cause is physical, and the first medicine 
 ought to be that given to the prophet Elijah 
 by the angel. But the pain is of the soul and 
 must be assuaged by spiritual remedies.
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH 53 
 
 The best of them all is to forget one's self 
 and to think of God. Looking within only 
 depresses, looking out is sure to cheer. The 
 strenuous effort to escape from self and rest 
 in God reacts with tonic effect on the soul, 
 bracing and restoring its lost energies, filling 
 it with peace and joy. 
 
 A third trial of faith comes from the wilful 
 treachery of a friend in whom we have trusted, 
 and this one cuts to the quick. No argument 
 against Christianity, no failure of the body, 
 is so apt to blast our faith in God and men 
 as the kiss of Judas Iscariot. It is a bitter 
 experience and seems to sweep away all our 
 sweet illusions leaving us without a friend 
 to rely upon, or a hope to cherish. Life is 
 poisoned through all its veins and breeds 
 suspicion, revenge, uncharitableness. No- 
 thing can save us in such circumstances from 
 cynicism and scepticism, except a supreme 
 rally of charity which shall recall the im- 
 mense goodness that we have all seen and 
 tasted, which shall cast out the remembrance 
 of Judas with the love of John.
 
 54 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 The trials of faith are innumerable, but their 
 effect ought to be one to clarify, strengthen, 
 and settle. Surely it is good to learn that 
 the object of faith is not the Bible, nor creeds, 
 nor ourselves, nor our neighbours, but God 
 Himself and Jesus His Son. It is not the 
 Bible which proves Jesus, but Jesus that 
 proves the Bible. If dogmas have often been 
 unreasonable, Jesus Himself has commended 
 Himself to every man's mind. Our feelings 
 may run up or down, God's love remaineth. 
 Men may fall beneath themselves, God is true. 
 When faith is gathered in and concentrated 
 on the Eternal, it cannot be shaken. With 
 every day's fellowship, every day's obedience, 
 every day's knowledge, it strikes its roots 
 deeper in God. It is excellent to say, ' God 
 of our fathers,' and to have one's piety linked 
 to the past/^but it is best to say ' my God,' 
 and to possess a faith that is unassailable, 
 because it has been won by our own hand 
 and is part of our own soul.
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 
 
 NEVER is one so utterly overcome by the 
 leaden weight of monotony as in a street of 
 the middle class. The West-end of society 
 stimulates the imagination by its suggestion 
 of historical names, of art treasures, of cul- 
 tured luxury. The East-end horrifies the 
 imagination by its suggestion of sanctioned 
 crime, of fierce deeds, of sheer barbarism. 
 One cannot see either the Borghese Palace 
 or a Bedouin's tent without a relief from the 
 ordinary, and a reinforcement of romance. 
 But to run the gauntlet of a hundred houses, 
 where each one is the exact reproduction of 
 all the rest, with so many windows on the 
 first floor, so many on the second ; with a 
 door of the same height, shape, appearance, 
 and with the very curtains all woven from 
 
 65
 
 56 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 the same pattern, is a weariness of the soul. 
 What a wilderness of the commonplace ; 
 what a miracle of sameness ! Certainly, as 
 seen from the street ; but open a door and 
 enter. In fifty-seven a young mother is 
 holding her first-born child ; in forty-two a 
 father is bidding his children farewell before 
 he takes the great journey ; in thirty-one a 
 son is telling his mother of his first success. 
 Those are events charged with the joy and 
 sorrow of life, chapters in the one lasting 
 romance. Within the smooth unrelieved 
 face of brick goes on the tragedy and victory 
 of being, as surely as in the ancient time, 
 and all the things are happening of which 
 poets sing. 
 
 Sometimes it also appears as if the mass 
 of people one meets were commonplace and 
 uninteresting to the last extreme. They 
 dress after the same fashion, they say the 
 same things, they have the same tricks of 
 manner ; they are the slaves of the same 
 conventions. If some one would only break 
 away from this conformity, if he would only
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 57 
 
 strike out for himself, what a colour he 
 would give to society; what a tonic he 
 would be to jaded minds. Have those men 
 and women no dreams, no visions, no pas- 
 sions, no commotions in their placid, self- 
 contained, orderly lives? So in our moods 
 of weariness we fret and complain of our 
 neighbours. Why are we not more under- 
 standing and sympathetic? Have we had 
 no experiences which we do not hand round 
 for inspection, which we lock up in our 
 hearts? Perhaps our neighbour has his 
 secrets too, and wears the thicker mask the 
 more he dreads detection. Once he winced 
 when conversation touched a certain kind 
 of family sorrow ; once his laugh was a little 
 forced concerning one of life's comedies ; 
 neither husband nor wife joined in your 
 condemnation of that social sinner. You 
 mean ? nothing, except that every one likes 
 to have some kind of screen between him 
 and the passers-by. You know? nothing, 
 absolutely nothing, except that every life has 
 had its incidents.
 
 58 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 It has been said that each one of us could 
 write one romance out of his own experi- 
 ences, and if that be true, the subject would 
 be love. Concerning this passion no sell- 
 respecting person will say much, and he that 
 has felt its tides at their fullest will say 
 least ; but beyond question it remains the 
 most irresistible and effectual in human ex- 
 periences. In the second part of the Holy 
 Scripture it is hardly touched upon, because 
 the New Testament is the history of a 
 cause ; in the former part it meets us every- 
 where, from the idyll of Jacob and Rachel 
 to the lamentable tragedy of Hosea, because 
 the Old Testament is the story of human 
 lives. The glory of pure love is sung in the 
 Canticles ; the pollution of unchaste desire 
 is declared in Proverbs. The romance of 
 Isaac meeting Rebekah in the eventide, and 
 being her true husband till death, is an 
 eternal contrast to David's wandering pas- 
 sions and loathly degradation. Outside the 
 Bible creative literature dealing with many 
 motives has ever returned to love, and
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 59 
 
 lavished its art on the analysis of this 
 supreme passion, which, if bound with many 
 cords, will yet tear itself free, and being 
 outraged, will in the end pull down the very 
 pillars of a human life. 
 
 It may not be possible so to appraise the 
 gains of life as to array them on a scale 
 from highest to lowest, giving to culture, 
 happiness, wealth, power, honour, each its 
 own fixed place, since what is fascinating 
 to one man is indifferent to his neighbour. 
 No one in his senses can doubt, however, 
 that love is the chief possession within our 
 imagination, and that its power has not 
 failed. For its sake a man has agonised 
 and striven with the world and his soul ; for 
 its sake a woman has welcomed hardship 
 and isolation, and both were right. Brown- 
 ing never struck a deeper and truer note 
 than the divinity and sovereignty of love, on 
 which he constructs some of his most cap- 
 tivating poems. As where the middle-aged 
 man mourns over the body of ' Evelyn 
 Hope,' whom he loved, but ' it was not her
 
 60 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 time to love ' ; whom he expects one day 
 'will wake and remember and understand.' 
 As in Too Late, where the lover holds his 
 peace too long, and sees his beloved give 
 herself to another, but after her death is con- 
 soled with the thought that in eternity she 
 will be his. As in the Summum Bonum, 
 which Browning wrote in old age, when he 
 is thinking of his poetess wife, and wherein 
 he declares 
 
 ' Truth, that 's brighter than gem, 
 Trust, that 's purer than pearl. 
 Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe all 
 
 were for me 
 In the kiss of one girl.' 
 
 Browning's moral and many will agree 
 with him is that love is the prize of life, 
 and that he only has succeeded who has 
 won it. 
 
 Some account must, however, be taken of 
 those who, having had their chance, have 
 deliberately and finally put love aside. No 
 one except their dear Lord and only Bride- 
 groom can reckon the devoted souls which
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 61 
 
 in all ages have denied themselves to human 
 love that they might the better follow Christ 
 whithersoever He goeth. And no one can 
 be quite insensible to the tender purity and 
 spiritual delicacy of certain saintly faces 
 which have been touched by the passion for 
 Christ. Nor must it be supposed that this 
 is only a cloistered piety, or that it can only 
 be found within convent walls. Most of us 
 know persons who have come under vow to 
 their own souls and have taken the solitary 
 road, not that they might attain to special 
 degree of sanctity, but that they might 
 render some life service. So brothers for 
 sisters, so sisters for brothers, so children 
 for parents have strengthened their hearts 
 and remained unwed. Sometimes their 
 sacrifice ftie last that can be offered has 
 been detected and rewarded by a gratitude 
 that ought to know no limits. Sometimes 
 it may be unsuspected and receive no return 
 but peevish reproaches. God's guerdon, at 
 least, does not tarry, for His hand has 
 already placed the aureole on those modest,
 
 62 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 unconscious heads, and filled with fragrance 
 those lives of uncomplaining, unboasting 
 love. 
 
 Certain persons have also come to a 
 place where they had the choice of tearing 
 an unworthy love from their lives or dis- 
 honouring their souls. Their love had been 
 belittled, or betrayed, or it had been flung 
 aside as a common thing, or it had been 
 dragged in the mire. It had been soiled 
 and they would no longer give it heart- 
 room, so they burned it saying nothing to 
 any one, but such will carry the marks of 
 the fire till they die. Of these Tennyson 
 was thinking in the Holy Grail, when he 
 described : 
 
 ' such a fervent flame of human love 
 Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot 
 Only to holy things ; to prayer and praise, 
 She gave herself, to fast and alms.' 
 
 This is the transformation of love which, 
 having been sent to the stake for conscience 
 sake, obtains the martyr's ruby crown. 
 
 Within this life the most pitiable of all
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 63 
 
 tragedies, and the most helpless, is a loveless 
 marriage. Just as marriage approaches the 
 estate of heaven for a man and a woman 
 whose souls are one in faith and hope, so 
 a marriage approaches the estate of hell 
 for two persons who have no community 
 of thought or faith. Where, for instance, 
 a man of bright intelligence is tied to a 
 coarse woman, or a spiritual woman united 
 to an evil-living man, it is not wonderful that 
 husband and wife should drift apart, and in 
 the end come to hate one another. One 
 can understand why some speak bitterly of 
 life and rail against marriage. Others show 
 a nobler courage in such a case, who hide 
 their sorrow from the world and carry their 
 heavy cross without speech, fulfilling the 
 will of God with a proud patience, and 
 having the nearer support of His favour till 
 the kindly hand of death break the 
 yoke. 
 
 After the victims of this cross-Providence 
 but at a long distance are those who 
 have loved and never been loved. It is
 
 64 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 surely a very hard lot to be dowered with 
 a wealth of love and find none to receive it. 
 We pity him who takes out a bundle of 
 faded letters and reads them with vain re- 
 gret, but he is far more to be pitied who has 
 no token because there has been for him 
 no lover. Ah, the silent sorrow of lonely 
 hearts which have never tasted life's cup of 
 joy ! Yet how evident and beneficent their 
 mission in the world, how surely they have 
 fulfilled it ! There may be unmarried people 
 who are sour and repellent. If so, bear 
 with them who have sustained a severer loss 
 than friends or goods. But they are not 
 typical of that class, who have the warmest 
 hearts in all the world, who are the chosen 
 refuge of every needy unfortunate, from boys 
 in scrapes and poor people in need to men 
 and women with some secret sorrow to tell 
 into a sympathetic ear. Their love has not 
 been centred on one, so it embraces a 
 hundred ; their interest has not been 
 narrowed to a single home, so it ranges 
 through a city ; no lover has monopolised
 
 MISSING THE PRIZE OF LIFE 65 
 
 their devotion, so it is poured on the body 
 of Christ. The alabaster box that had been 
 laid aside for a great occasion has been 
 broken, and the house is filled with the 
 odour of the ointment
 
 PARENTS at times make a pretty pretence 
 of indifference, but they are all aware that 
 their satisfaction in life is bound up with the 
 well-doing of their children. No man will 
 grudge any labour or privation to secure for 
 his son those advantages of culture which 
 circumstances denied to himself: no woman 
 will ever calculate her service to some 
 delicate child that he may grow into 
 strength. They will only taste regret if 
 that lad fling away his chances, if that 
 invalid live only to suffer. Do not envy 
 any one who has achieved material success 
 and has sons playing the fool ; be sure he 
 would give his fortune to see them earning 
 their bread after a self-respecting fashion. 
 
 66
 
 VEXATIOUS CHILDREN 67 
 
 Do not waste your pity on any one because 
 he has only a poor capital in money, if his 
 son has taken his degree with honour at the 
 University, or has won a name for integrity 
 on the Exchange ; this man is rich with 
 treasures which no thief can steal, and, as 
 Is becoming, that son's father carries a high 
 head. Did you ever grow weary while a 
 mother sang the praises of a well-deserving 
 son ? Were you ever so far left to yourself 
 as to sneer at her fondness? Then you 
 sinned against one of the purest and 
 tenderest of human emotions the joy of a 
 mother over her child. You had been a 
 person to smile at the Virgin Mother herself 
 who could not altogether hide from wit- 
 nesses her delight in the Holy Child ; to 
 belittle God Himself, who, according to the 
 beautiful story in the Gospel, was so moved 
 by the life of Jesus, that He spake from an 
 open heaven and said, ' My beloved Son.' 
 The pride which a child has in his parents is 
 excellent, something to be for ever cherished 
 and approved. But the pride which parents
 
 68 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 feel in a good and faithful son is one of the 
 most affecting and sanctifying spectacles in 
 human life. 
 
 One would like to get the ear of children 
 and suggest to them how much their parents' 
 life which means peace, hope, faith, and 
 joy depends on their conduct, in speech 
 and deed, in manner and bearing. If young 
 people could only put themselves in their 
 parents' place and imagine, wonderful things 
 would follow. Some idler, who will not 
 work from motives of fear or respect or 
 ambition, might be spurred by love, if only 
 to save his mother from reproach. Some 
 thoughtless, selfish girl might deny herself 
 whims and pleasures to bring satisfaction to 
 the hearts of her people. Some young man 
 might bear himself with a little more humi- 
 lity, and even condescend to give occasional 
 information about his movements, if he had 
 any idea of his father's feelings on certain 
 occasions. Parents are kept at a distance, 
 are denied proper confidence, have their 
 convictions, wishes, tastes if you please
 
 VEXATIOUS CHILDREN 69 
 
 foibles disregarded, look in vain for signs of 
 affection and gratitude, have their just pride 
 in their children wounded, not because the 
 children are bad or cruel, but only because 
 it does not occur to them that, although 
 they consider themselves independent of the 
 old folks, the old folks are continually, 
 willingly, pathetically dependent on them 
 for what is more than living, or rather what 
 is the heart of all living for love. 
 
 Parents ought, however, to be sensible, 
 reminding themselves that youth is a stage 
 in life calling for much patience and toler- 
 ance. It may rather be taken as a process 
 in the creation of character during which 
 the wine is apt to be frothy and unpalat- 
 able. Persons about twenty up or down 
 are often intoxicated with the first 
 draught of life, and are neither what they 
 were nor what they will be. They are 
 hasty in their judgments, positive in their 
 opinions, worshippers of idols, impatient 
 of restraint, ashamed of old-fashioned ways, 
 raised above the domestic affections, and
 
 70 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 wiser than all the ancients. They will 
 threaten to leave home to become writers, 
 artists, teachers, or something not defined, 
 only misty and grand. Their political, 
 social, and religious views may be amazing. 
 This mightiness ought not, however, to be 
 taken too seriously or made a cause of 
 quarrel between parents and children. This 
 is sowing wild oats after a harmless fashion, 
 and the wilful sower may be allowed some 
 freedom without fear. His heart is sound, 
 although his head be for the moment 
 turned, and in a year or two he will laugh at 
 himself openly. Do not let us call it vice, 
 and lie awake of nights because our children, 
 like other young animals, champ the bit and 
 toss their heads and threaten to run away, 
 when they are first harnessed to the duties 
 of life. 
 
 With years will come understanding and 
 self-restraint: with years will reappear the 
 homely duties and simple ways which were 
 for a little despised, and forty-nine out of 
 fifty will settle down to honest work and filial
 
 VEXATIOUS CHILDREN 71 
 
 piety. It may not be so with the fiftieth, and 
 there shall be the heartbreak. In his ill- 
 omened life the gaiety and irresponsibility 
 of youth deepen into insolence, idleness, 
 viciousness, and utter shamelessness. For a 
 time his faults are excused ; then they are 
 covered ; at last they are flagrant, so that 
 the world knows what has befallen this home. 
 Somewhere in a distant colony a son is living 
 as in the far country, carrying beneath his 
 degradation the traces of culture and re- 
 ligion. No acquaintance speaks of him to 
 his people ; his name is never mentioned i^ 
 the home ; all traces of him are removed ; 
 his mother alone pities and prays for him. 
 His history is written, for those who can 
 read, in his mother's face, in his father's 
 humiliation. This is the secret chapter in 
 many a family history ; this is the black 
 sorrow in many an English home, beside 
 which worldly losses and bereavement are 
 as nothing. 
 
 The tragedy of prodigalism is often very 
 perplexing and contradictory. One can
 
 72 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 easily find some home within his knowledge 
 where a son received no training in religion, 
 saw no example of piety, was brought up 
 under no restraint. Yet, without a single aid 
 to high living he grows up dutiful, thoughtful, 
 reverent a lad * any father would be well 
 satisfied to call his son. By the laws of here- 
 dity and environment he ought to be a pro- 
 digal, but he is not ; neither is he a Pharisee. 
 He would be a very creditable product for a 
 religious home. One can also lay his hand 
 on some other home, where a son has been 
 born in the line of faith ; has been reared 
 in an atmosphere of godliness ; has been led 
 into the paths of righteousness by a mother's 
 influence, a father's authority. Yet, with 
 everything in his favour, he breaks loose, and 
 sins grievously before man and God. He 
 was expected to sustain the traditions of his 
 house ; and he might have been the son of a 
 profligate. It is nonsense to say that the 
 children of religious people, as a rule, turn out 
 bad, and the children of irreligious people 
 good ; but Providence, in many cases,
 
 VEXATIOUS CHILDREN 73 
 
 does seem to play at cross purposes with 
 laws. 
 
 Very likely the cases would not seem so 
 unreasonable if all the facts were before our 
 judgment. It is quite possible that a father 
 may not attend church nor possess any creed, 
 may not be guarded in speech and conduct, 
 and yet be kindly, generous, unselfish, 
 winning. His children overlook his failings 
 for the real humanity that is in him. They 
 find in his natural goodness a substitute for 
 religious influence. They have reasons to 
 love him, and he that once loves will not 
 go astray. Yes ; and it is also true that a sin- 
 cere and consistent Christian may have been 
 hard, severe, forbidding, so that his children 
 trembled before him ; and received their reli- 
 gion at the end of a stick. Is it altogether 
 wonderful that under such a discipline young 
 people should come to hate religion, and end 
 in disgracing their father's name ? Before 
 any one can estimate the causes of this 
 family disaster he would require to know not 
 only the creed and order, but also the tone
 
 74 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and temper of the prodigal's home. He is 
 sometimes a surprise in nature, sometimes 
 the sudden reappearance of an evil ancestor, 
 but more often he is the result of an extreme 
 severity, or, it may be, an extreme weakness 
 on the part of good people. 
 
 Prodigal is too strong a word to describe a 
 large number of children, who are, however, a 
 constant trial to their parents. They are bad- 
 tempered, sullen, disobliging in the home, or 
 they are frivolous, light-headed, unstable ; or 
 they are extravagant, wasteful, luxurious ; or 
 they are deceitful, unreliable, scheming. Sons 
 will not fall into their father's plans, although 
 they be most just and reasonable ; daughters 
 will form unfortunate attachments, which can 
 only prove disastrous, and which the wider 
 wisdom of older people would have prevented. 
 It is one of the crudest ironies of life that a 
 man should spend the best years of his life 
 in hard, self-denying, successful work to 
 make a home for his family, such as neither 
 he nor his people before him enjoyed, and 
 that it should be made miserable for him by
 
 VEXATIOUS CHILDREN 75 
 
 the disobedient self-will and impracticable- 
 ness of his children : that a man should 
 amass wealth, every penny of which is a sign 
 of industry and integrity, and that he should 
 see it become an instrument of mischief 
 supporting incompetent sons in idleness, and 
 making his daughter a gilded bait for mean- 
 spirited fortune-hunters. The possibilities of 
 joy and sorrow within a family are known 
 only to God. 
 
 Given the best of children there must be 
 from time to time some vexation to the heads 
 of the house, and one good of this discipline 
 is to send them back on early days. Were 
 we ourselves always docile, considerate, affec- 
 tionate, understanding ? Did we never try 
 the patience of our elders ? did we never dis- 
 appoint them ? did we never grieve them ? 
 We enter into their feelings now, when it is 
 too late to ask their forgiveness, but not too 
 late to be penitent. Nothing becomes men 
 and women like genuine regret for the 
 errors of the past. It fosters in us humility, 
 tenderness and mercy. Prodigalism in
 
 76 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 children has often produced saintship in 
 parents. 
 
 Does not our pain give us an insight 
 into the heart of the Eternal Father, whose 
 children we all are, and whom we have all 
 grieved ? When we read our own feelings, 
 then we have the faint shadow of His whose 
 love is ever wounded, whose patience ever 
 waits, whose hope never fails. Between the 
 earthly parents and their prodigals, and the 
 heavenly Father with His, there springs up a 
 certain real sympathy, a certain community 
 of thought. Both have suffered, both have 
 made sacrifices ; both have their reward in 
 the future, both believe in the final victory of 
 love. And our faint and despairing faith is 
 caught up, established, and crowned in Him 
 who watcheth and will not cease to watch, 
 till from the wholesome misery of the far 
 country in this world, or in that which is to 
 come, the last of the prodigal children returns 
 home.
 
 OBSCURITY 
 
 EVERY person with the faintest ambition 
 of soul has at some time desired fame, and 
 has only resigned himself at last to obscurity 
 with a pang. His achievement was not 
 perhaps to be of the first order but he 
 hoped for a niche by itself where he would 
 stand, for a space at least, while the multi- 
 tude passed nameless and unnoticed. Youth 
 is mercifully charged with hope, and casts a 
 golden haze over the distant horizon, so 
 that a bright lad may naturally see himself 
 in high sunlit places and can hardly imagine 
 the steep grey defile, up which with his 
 fellows he must toil. Some mother, with 
 the pardonable and ever beautiful optimism 
 of love, is dazzled by her son's precocious 
 
 77
 
 78 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 cleverness and gives him to understand 
 that it is the merest question of time when 
 he will have the world at his feet. Various 
 pleasant omens sanction his ambitions like 
 land birds from the new world welcoming 
 his ship a prize at school or college, a 
 compliment from a distinguished man, some 
 reference in a paper, a little stroke of good 
 fortune in business. Although years come 
 and go without any sign of his kingdom, 
 yet is he still confident. One has to make 
 his way slowly and arduously at first has 
 it not been so with the masters in every de- 
 partment? and he even congratulates him- 
 self on a little touch of adversity. He does 
 not wish for too rapid success, it might 
 spoil him and his work. As he reaches 
 thirty his satisfaction with non-recognition 
 is a little laboured, and at forty, he has a 
 grievance. When he comes to middle age 
 he faces the situation with its hard bare 
 facts and sees his last illusion of success 
 vanish. It comes on him at last that he is 
 not to be a distinguished person, but only
 
 OBSCURITY 79 
 
 one of the many who make up the mass of 
 human life. For him there will be no 
 excitement of events, no name passed from 
 mouth to mouth, no achievement seen of all 
 men, but only to do the same thing over 
 and over again ; and as he looks out on the 
 grey sky and the monotony of ordinary 
 life rises up before him, he is cast down 
 and loses heart. 
 
 The sense of obscurity is deepened by the 
 spirit of the day which is restless and fever- 
 ish. Last generation favoured the homely 
 virtues and was satisfied with people 
 who were diligent, faithful, well-living and 
 kind. No doubt they might also be dull, 
 but no one seemed to remark this defect 
 or to count them a bore. We have an 
 absurd dread of the commonplace and are 
 devoured with the craving for cleverness. 
 We toil to speak in epigrams, we upset old 
 customs ; we do outrt things ; we affect 
 strange views. Wit has replaced wisdom, 
 and eccentricity is confounded with origin- 
 ality. Young people repudiate house-
 
 8o 
 
 hold duties and give themselves to ' mis- 
 sions ' : every sixth person attempts a book 
 or an art. When ordinary people cannot 
 make themselves heard by sane speech, they 
 shriek in order to catch attention and not be 
 as their neighbours. The elders are criti- 
 cised and belittled as old-fashioned, and the 
 courteous manners of the past are despised. 
 If one be aware that he is not in any way 
 distinguished, but is as ten thousand of hfs 
 neighbours, he is to-day apt to be con- 
 founded and to take shame unto himself. 
 
 An obscure person may, however, find con- 
 siderable consolation in the fact that, in spite 
 of all posturing on the part of ambitious 
 neighbours, the vast majority are really quite 
 ordinary people like himself, and that the 
 roll of fame in any age is very small. Will 
 three men out of a city of half-a-million be 
 known a hundred years afterwards ? Do we 
 not see men, who seemed to be something, 
 pass into oblivion within a year of their 
 death ? The mighty man of a town has not 
 been heard of four stations along the line,
 
 OBSCURITY 81 
 
 the oracle of a coterie is unknown in the 
 next street. As generations pass across the 
 stage a long, unceasing stream of men and 
 women, each with an individual life, how few 
 faces do we recognise! There, we say, is 
 St. Paul, that is Columbus, here is Raphael, 
 and we recognise Dante. Some hundred, or, 
 it may be, only fifty names, and the rest are 
 dust. Let us not, therefore, repine because 
 we share the inevitable lot of our brethren, 
 and have no hope of the greater fame. 
 
 And as for the little fame of our own 
 time, it is shorter than we imagine. Reputa- 
 tion was never so quickly made, never so 
 quickly dissipated as in our hurried day. 
 If the heroes flaunt in the sun of popular 
 applause, they have only an ephemeral 
 life. The preacher who had a crowd ten 
 years ago, is heard with languid interest 
 to-day. The writer of many editions once 
 is thankful at last to find a publisher. Let 
 a statesman withdraw for a short space 
 from the front, and the people ask them- 
 selves whether he is alive. Very likely the 
 F
 
 82 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 man speaks or writes as well as ever, but his 
 audience is fickle, and fashions change. He 
 was once the vogue, and people hidden away 
 in the crowd envied him : now he has dis- 
 appeared and is also lost. It may be on 
 the other hand that among that crowd there 
 is a man of the first order, whose name will 
 be recorded in the annals of the race, but 
 his own time knows him not or sends him 
 to death. Time, and time here means cen- 
 turies, is the alone arbiter of fame, and 
 casts contempt on tinsel crowns. 
 
 Besides, if it comes to notoriety, that is 
 easily won. If a writer will only dabble in 
 physical details, which decent minds ignore, 
 he will be credited with nobility of intention 
 and be read with prurient curiosity. Should 
 a preacher fail with the message of the 
 Gospels and the methods of the Master, he 
 can tickle foolish ears with a piquant treat- 
 ment of wages or murders. One has only to 
 dress absurdly and to cultivate a certain 
 insolence of manner to have her name in 
 people's mouths. And if all else fail, a
 
 OBSCURITY 83 
 
 shameful scandal or a crime will gain wider 
 notice than is given to a saint When it 
 came to be a choice, one day long ago, the 
 multitude preferred Barabbas to Christ, and 
 a dancing-girl had more weight than John 
 Baptist. To-day a prize-fighter would be 
 welcomed by a larger crowd than a man of 
 science, and a buffoon have wider apprecia- 
 tion than a poet. So poor and vulgar a 
 thing is publicity. 
 
 Is it not also the case that we owe some 
 of the greatest blessings in all spheres to 
 men whose names have perished. Who 
 compiled the Books of Moses ? Who wrote 
 the Epic of Job ? Who poured out the bit- 
 terness of a wounded disappointed heart in 
 Ecclesiastes, who filled our mouth with the 
 Psalms ? Who first ploughed the earth and 
 sowed the seed ? Who hollowed out a log 
 and put out to sea ? Who invented written 
 characters ? Who inaugurated commerce or 
 created government? We do not know. 
 And for the ordinary gifts on which our life 
 depends, are we not indebted to obscure
 
 84 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 people ? to sailors, miners, ploughmen, crafts- 
 men, to servants, neighbours, friends, Our 
 mother, for instance, to whom we owe more 
 than to any other person except Jesus Christ, 
 was she conspicuous and dazzling by her 
 talents? Perhaps she was, but what we 
 remember was her love. 
 
 What remaineth for us obscurities 
 ordinary folk in every calling and place is 
 to accept the situation not only with submis- 
 sion but with perfect good-nature. Granted 
 that we are not, say, poets or painters or 
 even millionaires, we have some work to do 
 and some friends to love us. We have also 
 some successes when our bit of work is 
 finished and some joys, when we can help 
 a brother in the battle. If no one knows 
 our name outside our home and office, let 
 us do our duty there with all our might. 
 And let us lay to heart two consolations. If 
 we have a talent and there be no room for it 
 here, we shall get our opportunity hereafter. 
 In this life we and our fellows, millions 
 with vast possibilities and no opportunities,
 
 OBSCURITY 85 
 
 are like seedlings packed together in boxes 
 and longing for room. By and by the gardener 
 will prick the young plants out in the open 
 bed and each shall have its place, where 
 in the sunshine and before the owner's eye 
 it can come to full height. If this world 
 be narrow, the next will be wide. Nor 
 should we forget, that after all the greatest 
 affair in life is the creation of character, and 
 this can be accomplished as well in a cottage 
 as in a palace. Finer webs with more lasting 
 and richer colour, are wrought in poor 
 Eastern huts than in the huge sounding 
 manufactories whose black smoke trails 
 across the sky. It was in a very humble 
 home that the Perfect man lived ; and he 
 has made the great success who, by patience 
 and obedience in that which is least has 
 grown into the likeness of the Son of God.
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 
 
 MANY ails of this life are so visible and 
 full-bodied that every person acknowledges 
 their existence and offers his sympathy to 
 their victims, but some are so intangible and 
 shadowy that people without imagination 
 doubt their reality and treat any one who has 
 had experience of them as if he had seen a 
 ghost. If our neighbour has lost a relative, 
 or has shares in a bankrupt bank, or is 
 suffering from a painful disease, or even is 
 crossed in love, we at once appreciate the 
 situation, and give him such aid as we can 
 in his straits. He has established a claim 
 on our charity, and no one calls his distress 
 whimsical or affected. Suppose, however, he 
 be cast down within his heart for reasons 
 
 86
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 87 
 
 less easy to put in words. Because he is 
 a true lover of Art and yet must be a clerk. 
 Because he has the gift of song and has 
 to teach little boys arithmetic. Because 
 he had dreams of friendship, and they have 
 mocked him. Because he had schemes of 
 philanthropy, and has to toil for daily bread. 
 Because he expected rest in religion, and be- 
 hold, a sword. This man should be very 
 careful in whom he places his confidence, 
 and should have modest expectations of 
 sympathy. If he be not laughed at as a 
 fantastic person, he will be considered the 
 creator of his own misery by the run of 
 people, and will be reminded that the world 
 has enough active trials without adding a 
 crop of afflictions which are quite unreal. 
 
 People who have never been conscious of 
 any ideals, and who therefore are safe 
 against all disillusions, can hardly enter into 
 his bitterness who has toiled up a long 
 ascent in hope of the view at the top, and 
 has only faced another hill ; who has run for 
 a crown and seen it crumble to dust in his
 
 88 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 hands. How this man imagined the days 
 that were to be, the works he was to do, 
 the pure joy he was to drink ! How for the 
 joy set before him he endured many a cross, 
 beat down many a temptation, held the 
 world at arm's-length. And his reward ? 
 As it seems, nothing. He has been de- 
 ceived, defrauded, befooled ; he is set forth 
 as a warning to all who cherish ideals, as a 
 sermon to hold the imagination well in hand. 
 Better to trudge along one's road without 
 thinking of the horizon. Wiser to forget 
 that life has any perspective, and to see it 
 as a flat surface of immediate duty. The 
 prosaic people have chosen the better part 
 if they be as matter-of-fact as they would 
 have us believe, and if they have any portion 
 at all for the soul, of which one is by no 
 means sure. Better have no ideals that we 
 may have no rude awakenings, since blighted 
 hopes are worse to bear than lost posses- 
 sions, and withered hearts than empty 
 homes. 
 
 This advice has only one fault ; it is a
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 89 
 
 counsel of perfection, since no arguments of 
 prudence or utility can purge human hearts 
 of their secret dreams. As within some 
 commonplace smoke-grimed house in a 
 crowded street may be kept half-a-dozen 
 pictures of the great period, so no one can 
 be sure that there is one commonplace man 
 or woman without some fond cherished illu- 
 sion. This hard -worked general servant 
 with only her day out and Sunday for bits 
 of blue in her grey sky anticipates her 
 own house three poor rooms, but her 
 home. More washing of dishes and more 
 slaving than ever, yes, but her own dishes 
 now, and for her own folk. Yon mother, 
 weighed down by the care of a young family 
 and harassed by petty cares, sees her boys 
 arising to call her blessed. That keen 
 business man, the very scorn of sentiment, 
 hopes by and by to have his cottage in the 
 country with old-fashioned roses over the 
 door. 'Tis all very absurd, if you please, 
 but 'tis a fact to be acknowledged and not 
 to be changed. It is one of the whims of
 
 po THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 human nature, and cannot be eliminated 
 till we be all taken down to the foundation, 
 and rebuilt on a sound, practical plan, with- 
 out emotion, imagination, vision, without 
 faith, hope, spirituality. Which will take 
 some time in doing, and is not going to be 
 attempted in this life, nor even perhaps in 
 the life to come. 
 
 Something, of course, may be done to 
 starve ideals, and to reduce us all to a level 
 of safety and dulness. Books of poetry 
 ought to be placed under lock and key, for 
 no one can estimate the damage done by 
 such writings. Consider what a lift has been 
 given to the soul and on what romantic 
 quests it has been sent by the Idylls of 
 the King) by Rabbi Ben Ezra, by Words- 
 worth's odes, by Burns's songs. Nor is 
 history absolutely harmless, because some 
 inflammable youth might be set on fire 
 by Motley's Dutch Republic or Carlyle's 
 French Revolution. Biography is dull 
 enough, and yet who would guarantee that 
 the life of Gordon might not lead to some
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 91 
 
 foolish scheme of sacrifice. Literature in all 
 her departments, except pure mathematics 
 and natural science, has been a foolish, 
 doting foster-mother of illusions. Given a 
 book, and anything may happen in the way 
 of inspiration ; given a personality, and 
 some Peter may leave all to follow him. 
 Nature herself is a conspirator, for even, 
 after precaution has been taken to refrige- 
 rate the soul, one might see a sunset, or a 
 sunrise, and begin to glow. 
 
 What dangerously increases the charm 
 and force of illusions is the evident sym- 
 pathy of the Bible. It is, from beginning to 
 end, a record of radiant hopes clouded, of 
 great adventures fruitless, of fond imagina- 
 tions disappointed, as it seems to flesh and 
 blood. Abraham left his own country and 
 his father's house to obtain an unseen land, 
 and died having possessed nothing of Canaan 
 save Sarah's grave. The Hebrews set out 
 from Goshen for a land flowing with milk 
 and honey, and perished in the wilderness. 
 The nation chose a king with vast enthu-
 
 92 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 siasm, and the kingdom ended in disruption 
 and disaster. The prophets depicted the 
 glory of the Messianic age, when the nations 
 should go up to Jerusalem, and the Holy 
 City was laid in ruins. The apostles ex- 
 pected to sit on thrones with Jesus in this 
 kingdom and were put to death by the 
 sword. The early Christians looked unto 
 the clouds of heaven to see Jesus coming 
 in His power, and for twenty centuries there 
 has been no sign. How the human heart has 
 been excited, gladdened, misled, by the book 
 which is as the shining of God's face. 
 
 The story of the Bible has been repeated 
 within the soul, for manifestly this charge 
 of sustained illusion can also be brought 
 against the experiences of religion. God 
 reveals Himself to us in some act of Provi- 
 dence or grace, and we set out on his 
 pursuit, who seems afterwards ever to 
 elude our soul, ever to be just beyond our 
 grasp. We fling ourselves in penitence upon 
 the Divine mercy and hear an inward voice 
 bidding us go into peace, and we enter that
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 93 
 
 day on the longest, bitterest, hardest con- 
 flict of our life with sin and self. Magni- 
 ficent promises embolden us to ask of God 
 whatsoever we will, and the answers come 
 long afterwards, and as something we never 
 desired. Jesus calls us to the noblest service 
 and speaks of a reward, and all His best 
 disciples ever obtained this side of the grave 
 has been labour, opposition, agony. Our 
 souls picture a heaven of splendid circum- 
 stances and unbroken rest, and heaven will 
 most likely be the beginning of a new 
 service. Never was there any faith so 
 beautiful as that of Jesus, never one has 
 been so unsubstantial. 
 
 Ordinary life itself is only another illustra- 
 tion of illusion from our first day of con- 
 sciousness to our death. The child builds 
 his castles in the air and tells his fairy tales, 
 and we smile at the young dreamer. Why 
 should we, who are all such castle-builders, 
 such prolific ' makers ' ? The lad bears the 
 discipline and restraint of school, for the 
 hope of freedom and power held before
 
 94 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 him. How dangerous a liberty, how poor 
 an authority when they come ! The young 
 workman in trade or business, in art or 
 letters, tries to perfect himself in detail that 
 he may achieve something by and by, and 
 twenty years later he is not satisfied. The 
 man of middle age bends his neck to the 
 yoke that he may the sooner enter on his 
 well-earned rest, and when it is eventide he 
 lives again in the efforts of his children. 
 Life is ever an ambition; never a possession. 
 The pursuit of the ideal is not really a craze 
 of certain minds, it is the necessity laid on us 
 all : illusion is not one of the disabilities of 
 life, it is a principle of Providence. 
 
 This principle explains life, clearing up 
 some very perplexing mysteries and chang- 
 ing a riddle into a design. There is a world 
 of difference between delusion and illusion. 
 If life were so arranged that we should be 
 led on in search of El Dorado, and should 
 perish miserably having received nothing, 
 then had we been cruelly wronged, and the 
 evil-doer had been God. Upon those terms
 
 VANISHING ILLUSIONS 95 
 
 one could not believe in God, one must be 
 a pessimist and an atheist. But if we be 
 skilfully tempted to dig for gold in our 
 neglected vineyard, not that we may find 
 gold which would be a doubtful blessing, 
 but that we may gather every year richer 
 clusters of the vine, then we have received 
 beyond our expectations, and this good 
 thing has come from God. 
 
 Our principle also beautifies life, for it 
 suggests the tenderness and thoughtfulness 
 of our heavenly Father. For there are two 
 methods of government, one by compulsion 
 and one by allurement ; and it is a proof of 
 the Divine wisdom and goodness, that at 
 every step of life we are invited, not threat- 
 ened. Prizes are continually held before 
 our eyes, and we are strengthened to endure 
 by the joy set before us. For the heritage 
 of manhood a child does not complain of 
 pupilage ; for the achievements of success a 
 young man welcomes risk and peril ; for the 
 sweetness of rest a man accepts the hard- 
 ships of labour. So we are helped up the
 
 96 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 steep way that leadeth to the stars, ever 
 refreshed with a new hope, ever discovering 
 a new horizon. 
 
 And this principle assures us of the real 
 gain of life. It may seem as if we were 
 getting nothing ; in reality we are heirs of 
 everything. What a boy earns at school 
 is not a medal but knowledge. What he 
 earns in after years is not wealth but char- 
 acter. What a Christian receives from faith 
 is not an escape from punishment but the 
 gift of everlasting life. What Abraham 
 received in the end was not the land of 
 Canaan but God Himself, the strength and 
 portion of the human soul. For illusions 
 are like the bright and fragrant spring blos- 
 som which is scattered on the ground, but 
 leaves behind it the sure earnest of a golden 
 autumn.
 
 THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL 
 
 EACH person has two lives one of which is 
 known to the world, one of which is hidden. 
 The former life could be written by an ac- 
 quaintance, for the material lies ready to his 
 hand and can be gathered in the light of day. 
 It would have chapters on childhood, youth, 
 manhood, middle age ; chapters on school, 
 university, office, home ; chapters on politics, 
 creed, philanthropy, public service ; chapters 
 on successes, failures, trials, honours. Perhaps 
 it might even have a chapter on character, 
 whereat the man himself would smile sadly 
 for the virtues he never really had. This bio- 
 graphy may be written by any pen, for there 
 is no copyright in these things ; and it may 
 be scattered abroad, for there is no secrecy. 
 G
 
 98 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 When people read this life they are apt to 
 imagine that everything has been told, and 
 that the man has been revealed. We are so 
 easily satisfied with an appearance ; we are 
 so slow to suspect the heart within. This 
 catalogue of dates, places, events, words, 
 traditions, functions, the story of a life ! It 
 is only the green grass and flowers which 
 conceals a treasure or a grave a common 
 photograph of the face which any passer-by 
 can see upon the street. 
 
 The other life is unknown to one's mother, 
 and is barely suspected by the shrewdest 
 friend, but it is real, influential, eternal. It 
 also has chapters which do not turn on 
 numbers or geography, which have yielded 
 nothing to newspapers or gossip. That 
 Sunday year forgotten : the old church 
 mother remembered, and the softness of her 
 sealskin jacket: preacher in pulpit name 
 first unknown : text from somewhere could 
 not find it for father in evening : could not 
 even give heads afterward was supposed to 
 have behaved badly in church : and to this
 
 THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL 99 
 
 day we can recall the sensation. When men 
 write diaries for publication after death they 
 call this experience conversion, but the boy 
 had no name for it said nothing about it 
 dares hardly believe even to this day that 
 God spoke unto him. One night the lad 
 could not sleep, although in perfect health 
 and very tired after a day out-of-doors. He 
 had been taken unawares that afternoon, 
 and now repented bitterly of the lie. The 
 shining of the moonlight, the whiteness of 
 his bed, the stillness of the room all affright, 
 shame, condemn him. He has been caught, 
 broken, degraded within himself, and is a 
 thing of contempt. He is an old man now, 
 and has had many sore tussles with sin, but 
 that wound still smarts at a time, and the 
 scar will always be seen. One morning a 
 man flung aside his books, and went out 
 upon the hill. For hours he tramped across 
 the heather till he came to a lonely spot 
 where a river rises from its spring, and then 
 he sat himself down to settle the matter. 
 What matter ? It woirld hardly be believed
 
 ioo THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 by his friends who know the common-sense, 
 hard-headed, middle-aged man, but it was 
 the question whether there be a God, what 
 He is, and who we are. When he came 
 back in the light of the setting sun, his face 
 was full of peace. Unwritten chapters, the 
 origin, maybe, of a long soul-biography that 
 shall have in it much of joy and sadness, 
 many defeats and many victories. 
 
 It is indeed difficult to know whom one 
 ought to pity or envy, for one knows so little 
 about the inner life. You have often been 
 concerned about a neighbour because he had 
 lost a child or was in narrow circumstances, 
 or suffered from weak health, or was out of 
 society. Perhaps you would have saved 
 your sympathy for some more needy case 
 had you dwelt for an hour in that man's soul, 
 which was closed against the vexations of 
 the world, which was enriched with the gifts 
 of God, where the divine peace ever rested, 
 and the angels of God were frequent guests. 
 You have in thought congratulated another 
 friend because all things seem to work
 
 THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL 101 
 
 together for his good, and the sun is ever 
 shining on his life. You had changed your 
 mind after one glimpse into his soul, with its 
 fierce passions, its unredeemed materialism, 
 its dominant selfishness, its black unbelief. 
 For each man lives two lives the one ^n 
 the outer court, where the world comes and 
 goes ; and the one within the veil, where he 
 is alone and the real joy of living is the 
 light of God within, and the sense of victory 
 over sin. 
 
 Various experiences of the secret life fill 
 one with shame, but the persistence of a 
 besetting sin drives one near to despair. Far 
 back in childhood this evil visitor first 
 appeared in our soul, and filled us with 
 horror. We shrank from his touch, and 
 ordered him out at the door. For a while 
 his face was not seen, and we had forgotten 
 the incident. One day he is found hanging 
 round the outskirts of our life like a restless 
 predatory vagrant, and after a few months, 
 when we are accustomed to his appearance, 
 he crosses the threshold and pleads for
 
 102 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 house-room. Times there are when we 
 drive him forth in anger ; times there are 
 when we endure his presence. He comes to 
 have his place and his employment in our 
 soul, a vagabond of whom we are ashamed 
 but whom we tolerate, whom we condemn 
 but whom we would miss. Now and again 
 our conscience awakes and arises to put the 
 house in order, and then there is a fiery 
 scene and our unholy lodger is banished, with 
 strict warning never to return. Within a few 
 days the unabashed figure finds the door on 
 the latch and makes for his accustomed 
 corner with a leer, and we are so disheartened 
 that it seems no use to dispute his coming. 
 
 The unspeakable disgrace of this lifelong 
 partnership is one of the horrors of the soul 
 and the cause of its bitterest self-reproach. 
 Our friends remarked, say, our fierce temper 
 in childhood, but were certain it would be 
 mastered when we had more understanding. 
 Youth brought no self-restraint, and our hot 
 head involved us in acts of reckless insubor- 
 dination. Manhood, with its cares and respon-
 
 THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL 103 
 
 sibilities, did not lay this evil spirit to rest. 
 The calm dignity of old age was humiliated 
 by the same fits of passion that had devas- 
 tated our youth. We have passed from stage 
 to stage of life, but have not shaken off this 
 sin ; we have changed our house again and 
 again, but have not left this fellow-tenant. 
 We have worn out several bodies but not this 
 body of death. It guarantees our identity, 
 it maintains our continuity, it links us with 
 the past. People who had not seen us for half 
 a lifetime recognise us without hesitation. 
 Our eyes are the same colour, our voice is in 
 the same key, and our temper is as fresh and 
 strong and masterful as ever. 
 
 It does sometimes happen that we are rid 
 of a sin not because we have conquered it 
 but because it has grown effete. There are 
 sins of foolishness that die for want of nour- 
 ishment with the thinner blood of age, but 
 their vacant place is apt to be taken by others 
 which are quite as pestilent and which have 
 come to stay. An exchange of sins can 
 hardly be called a victory of the soul, for one
 
 104 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 has gained little who was once a voluptuary 
 and now is a miser. The Protean variety of 
 sin gets upon the nerves, and one has the 
 sense of being shadowed by an enemy who is 
 ever appearing in some new disguise and is 
 ever on one's track. It seems an almost 
 hopeless campaign, because it has no truces, 
 because it is an endless series of battle- 
 grounds, because it is not likely to have any 
 end, till death. And then, what if death 
 does not cut this miserable union, and our 
 sin and our soul begin life together on the 
 other side ? what if the humiliation of these 
 few years be perpetuated through the ages ? 
 It may seem impossible to get any con- 
 solation out of this conflict, but at least the 
 shame of it is certain to cleanse us from all 
 self-righteousness and to inspire us with 
 humility. He is coated with triple brass 
 who should be assailed by fiery temptations 
 and yet have no sympathy with a neighbour's 
 conflict, who should be overcome by the 
 power of an ancient sin and yet have no 
 charity for the fall of a brother. When one
 
 THE DEFEATS OF THE SOUL 105 
 
 is fighting for his life every day with tempta- 
 tion he can hardly be a Pharisee. If people, 
 through thinness of nature or an over- 
 mastering prudence, are never inclined to 
 transgress, they are apt to be censorious 
 and unmerciful, but he who has many scars 
 carries a tender heart. 
 
 Frequent disasters of the soul deliver us 
 from shallow views of religion and convince 
 us that we need more for our security than 
 an example. No power can be of much avail 
 that does not act from within and reinforce 
 us in the crises of temptation. What one 
 longs for is a second alliance this time with 
 a Saviour. If there be any one in heaven 
 or earth who has gone through the same 
 agony and has come out victor, who has a 
 fellow-feeling with other men and is ready 
 to join forces with them ; then we need not 
 abandon hope although the past has been one 
 uninterrupted defeat. It is at this point of 
 despair many people have turned to Jesus 
 and made trial of Him for the first time. 
 Before, they may have believed or disbelieved
 
 IP 
 
 106 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 about Him, they knew nothing of Him, be- 
 cause he was outside, a historical, theological 
 personage. When one, as a last resource, 
 has received Jesus within and begins to wage 
 war in His fellowship, then it comes to pass 
 that the Gospels are repeated in his inner 
 life, and a plain man will have his own 
 materials before he dies both for a book of 
 Psalms and a biography of Jesus.
 
 THE VEILING OF THE SOUL 
 
 IN one of his Twice-Told Tales > Hawthorne 
 describes how a much-loved Puritan minister 
 conceived the weird idea of concealing his 
 face with a veil, and how his people were 
 affected with a sense of painful mystery as 
 he went in and out among them with covered 
 countenance till the end of his days. His 
 betrothed forsook him ; the bride trembled 
 before him at her marriage ; children fled 
 from him on the road ; people whispered as 
 he passed. One realises in an instant, as he 
 reconstructs the scene, how much of the 
 confidence and joy of life depend on our 
 beholding one another, literally, with open 
 face. Imagine the change and horror, if 
 
 one morning each man's face was covered 
 
 107
 
 io8 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 with black and impenetrable to his neigh- 
 bour. Laughter would cease on earth ; who 
 then would have the heart for mirth under 
 this cloud ? None would be able to comfort 
 his neighbour, for none could estimate his 
 brother's sorrow. Speech would languish, 
 for it would have no visible response. Love 
 itself would die when every emotion was 
 masked. The very power of association and 
 the instinct of trust would be destroyed 
 when every man had withdrawn into dark- 
 ness. Were there no revelation of the face 
 then there would be neither faith nor fellow- 
 ship possible on earth. 
 
 It is possible to give this image of the veil a 
 more spiritual direction and a more searching 
 meaning. St. Paul in his great chapter on 
 Charity imagines that the covering is really 
 upon the soul, and he is much affected by 
 the fact that we see nothing, neither truth 
 nor people clearly. We see not 'face to 
 face,' but rather as those studying one 
 another 'through a glass, darkly.' We do 
 not understand our neighbour, we speculate
 
 THE VEILING OF THE SOUL 109 
 
 about him. He is to us an unknown 
 quantity, and we deal with him as a chemist 
 with a new material. There are about him 
 certain properties evidence he has flung 
 out, as it were, for our guidance his looks, 
 his speech, his actions, his habits. These 
 we collect and analyse; we form a list of 
 components ; we strike a balance ; we con- 
 clude he is this or that. Very likely we 
 assign him a label, and speak as if he 
 were classified. Yet we are aware of our 
 ignorance and helplessness ; we are bitterly 
 conscious that the very essence of the man 
 has escaped and defied all our tests. Some- 
 times we remark of some one ' he is difficult 
 to know ' ; perhaps it were nearer the truth 
 to say that it is impossible to know any 
 one. 
 
 Consider, for instance, how seldom six 
 sensible and charitable people will agree as 
 to the character of some mutual friend, so 
 many considering that his strong point is 
 sweet temper, while the others insist that it is 
 self-restraint Consider, also, what a power
 
 i io THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 of surprise lies in even shallow natures, so 
 that one whom we thought the weakest 
 develops an immovable obstinacy, and one 
 whom we considered unfeeling shows him- 
 self capable of immense unselfishness. What 
 unexpected loyalties or treacheries ; what 
 deeds of heroism or meanness ; what intel- 
 lectual achievements or imbecilities emerge 
 in lives we prided ourselves on having 
 surveyed and sounded. Times there were 
 when we seemed to have mapped out every 
 inch in a friend's life, times there are when 
 it seems as if we had only sailed along the 
 coast. We may ascend some open river for 
 a distance, but the heart of this continent 
 remains a mystery. Is it not the case that 
 a man and a woman may live together in 
 the sacred intimacy of wedlock, sharing as 
 it appears, and as they imagine, every 
 feeling, hope, belief, and yet discover with 
 a shock of disappointment that each is 
 completely fenced round and secluded from 
 the other ? 
 
 This veil is not to be thought of as an
 
 THE VEILING OF THE SOUL in 
 
 expedient of the individual to preserve his 
 privacy, for he cannot remove it any more 
 than his neighbour. For one thing it is 
 physical, and must last while we are in this 
 present environment If the body be an 
 instrument of revelation so that by our eyes 
 and mouth and hands we declare ourselves, 
 it is also a thick cloak of concealment, so 
 that only as one pierces through the flesh 
 can he reach the soul. No doubt the coun- 
 tenance, as the years pass, is dominated 
 by the soul and grows into its likeness. 
 The saint looks out on us through a clear 
 window, and the evil-liver has his character 
 written on his face. One, however, knows 
 how often in the beginning the shape of the 
 body is a contradiction of the soul ; for 
 nothing is more common than a perfect face 
 giving a deceptive certificate to hollowness 
 and insincerity, or homely features discredit- 
 ing honesty and affection. We are indeed 
 so sensible of this anomaly that our minds 
 are almost inclined to accept it as an axiom 
 that where Nature has given the form of
 
 ii2 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 Venus it is safe to expect folly, but 
 where she has condescended to the face of 
 Socrates, there one may be certain of 
 wisdom. 
 
 And this veil is also another patent proof 
 that the mercy of God is over all His works, 
 for surely we ought to be thankful that in 
 this present life our souls are screened from 
 public view. As Nature conducts her initial 
 processes in secret and it were cruel to lay 
 them bare so does the Divine Spirit pursue 
 His work upon the soul in darkness. If it 
 were permitted to any human hand to expose 
 a soul, then none in this life could stand the 
 trial. What motives of self-interest, move- 
 ments of unholy passion, base feelings of 
 envy, hot fits of anger disturb and defile the 
 soul even of a saint ! It is indeed through 
 this very discipline of temptation and cease- 
 less conflict with evil thai. Lue soul is purified 
 and strengthened, and comes at last to 
 perfection. While we are still struggling 
 through our Purgatorio no prying eye may 
 criticise or condemn, in the Paradiso the veil
 
 THE VEILING OF THE SOUL 113 
 
 can be safely dropped from God's finished 
 work. 
 
 If this veiling of the soul be inevitable 
 in the present dispensation, it has serious 
 dangers which we must remember and 
 conquer. Every one of us is liable to be 
 misunderstood and to suffer injustice. If 
 we could explain ourselves and let every- 
 thing be known, then they had not called 
 us ungenerous, or proud, or bigoted, or 
 heretical, or something else that may not be 
 worse than we are, but happens not to be 
 what we are. It is quite fair we should be 
 condemned for our faults ; it is not fair we 
 should be condemned for our no faults ; and 
 yet for the most part any protest is useless. 
 Many a private person in a household, many 
 a labourer in the public service, many a 
 teacher in the Church, has been miscon- 
 strued and misjudged all his days without 
 relief. Let him not complain overmuch. 
 When one remembers how hard it is to 
 understand himself, and how often he has 
 erred both in self-depreciation and self- 
 H
 
 H4 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 approval, it is not wonderful that one should 
 be misunderstood by other people. The 
 situation is not without its consolations : 
 through all His life, from Nazareth to 
 Calvary, Jesus was never understood, except 
 by Mary of Bethany and St. John. 
 
 Perhaps it were better for most of us 
 to complain less of being misunderstood and 
 to take more care that we do not mis- 
 understand other people. It ought to give 
 us pause at a time to remember that each 
 one has a stock of cut-and-dry judgments 
 on his neighbours, and that the chances 
 are that most of them are quite erroneous. 
 What our neighbour really is we may 
 never know, but we may be pretty certain 
 that he is not what we have imagined, 
 and that many things we have thought of 
 him are quite beside the mark. What he 
 does we have seen, but we have no idea 
 what may have been his thoughts and in- 
 tentions. The mere surface of his character 
 may be exposed, but of the complexity 
 within we have not the faintest idea. People
 
 THE VEILING OF THE SOUL 115 
 
 crammed with self-consciousness and self- 
 conceit are often praised as humble, while 
 shy and reserved people are judged to be 
 proud. Some whose whole life is one subtle 
 studied selfishness get the name of self- 
 sacrifice, and other silent heroic souls are 
 condemned for want of humanity. 
 
 Perhaps the saddest calamity of our veiled 
 state is the misunderstanding that some- 
 times arises between people who are of the 
 same family or are close friends. It is not 
 easily removed or explained ; it may rather 
 deepen than lessen with the years ; it may 
 last for life. Nothing surely can be a sorer 
 cross than the alienation of one whom we 
 love, whom we trust, whom once we 
 made our confidant. Whether the outside 
 world appreciate one is of secondary import- 
 ance, it takes the heart out of one to be 
 daily misread by his own. How one longs 
 for the shining of the sun, and the disper- 
 sion of the cloud ! That day may never 
 come this side the grave ; in such an event 
 let it be our consolation that those who have
 
 ii6 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 been estranged shall at last know even as 
 they are known. Like ships that start on the 
 great voyage together, and lose sight of one 
 another in the fog, what can friends do but 
 feel their way with caution and patience, 
 lest there be collision and disaster, till at 
 the final sunrise they cast anchor side by 
 side in the fair haven of peace, and see one 
 another ' face to face.'
 
 PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES 
 
 No one can read the Old Testament without 
 observing that its writers are greatly con- 
 cerned about the way in which Providence 
 treats the righteous man. They take for 
 granted that he ought to be favoured of God, 
 and that the unrighteous man ought to suffer; 
 but it appears as if God shone upon the 
 wicked and frowned on the good. The 
 Psalmist complains bitterly that vile men are 
 exalted. The prophets mention as one of 
 the signs of the golden age that the churl 
 shall no longer be counted bountiful. The 
 Book of Job is a profound discussion of the 
 apparent contradiction of Justice, and the 
 writer of Ecclesiastes almost lost hope of a 
 world where the same lot is assigned to saint 
 
 117
 
 ii8 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and sinner. When the righteous are blessed 
 or when the unrighteous are punished, a load 
 is lifted from the conscience and reason of 
 these thinkers, and it appears as if their faith 
 would hardly have any trial were this mystery 
 of government solved. Let every man get 
 his due, then 
 
 1 God 's in his heaven, 
 All 's right with the world.' 
 
 Perhaps the West can hardly appreciate 
 the force of this complaint to the full, because 
 it has not felt its pressure. We have not 
 known what it is to be wronged and robbed, 
 to be cruelly oppressed, and to suffer the last 
 outrage in our homes without protection or 
 redress. While the hope of justice remains 
 a man can endure, when justice sides with 
 the criminal the victim's blood turns to gall. 
 The fierce energy of the West has wrought 
 salvation, breaking to pieces the power of 
 i.he tyrant, compelling equal laws, sur- 
 rounding justice with a wall of fire, casting 
 an invincible shield over the helpless. Cer- 
 tain passages of the Bible are obsolete for
 
 PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES 119 
 
 the West and are to us hardly intelligible. 
 Our fathers knew their meaning. There are 
 Christians in the East to-day that will still 
 read them with passion. These passages 
 are the litany of the poor, of the helpless, of 
 women and children, the appeal of all miser- 
 ables to a silent God, who will not move, who 
 seems not to care, who has, notwithstanding, 
 been partaker of the human Gethsemane, and 
 Himself inspired the passion of this cry. 
 
 We of the West have our own quarrel with 
 Providence although it be on a minor scale 
 and it frets our souls at a time and dashes 
 the sweetness of faith. It appears as if 
 through carelessness or blindness certain in- 
 dividuals had been confused in the arrange- 
 ment of affairs, so that A receives the recom- 
 pense of B, and B is condemned to the lot of 
 A. One man is honourable, high-spirited, 
 religious, faithful. His word is certain, his 
 friends trust him unto death, his family adore 
 him, the world counts him righteous. Here 
 is one who surely will have riches and power 
 and honour and comfort, who will be crowned
 
 120 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 with fame before all the people. And instead 
 thereof his whole life is a struggle with 
 poverty, trials, and obscurity. He is not 
 called to dignity but to pity. Another man 
 is selfish,vtricky, merciless, mercenary, whose 
 word goes for nothing, who has done base 
 things, whom no one in private respects. 
 He ought to be an object of contempt left 
 alone in his place till he repents and does 
 righteousness. Yet because the fellow has 
 plausible manners and a fluent tongue and a 
 cunning intellect he too often wins his way 
 with the multitude and retains their suffrages 
 and lives at his ease. As he drives into the 
 city, the mud from this intriguer's carriage- 
 wheels defiles the coat of the righteous man. 
 This contrast may not be common, but it 
 does occur, and it raises questions about 
 the fairness of Providence. 
 
 This immoral situation makes good living 
 harder for us all, and surely any artificial 
 hindrance is scarcely needed. Many of us are 
 bitterly conscious of the temptation to do less 
 than our best and require every enforcement
 
 PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES 121 
 
 of virtue. Here before our eyes is a parable 
 teaching us in so many words that integrity 
 and piety are only the high-road to failure, 
 and that showy and unscrupulous methods 
 are the passport to success. There are some 
 whom no allurements can seduce from the 
 way of righteousness, and whom the sight of 
 the low estate of goodness will only estab- 
 lish in their integrity. Others are ready 
 enough to hearken to any voice which 
 declares that the gods do not see behind, 
 but are as easily deceived as foolish people. 
 Is it not dangerous for the individual that 
 the way of unrighteousness be laid out as a 
 primrose path, while the way of honour is 
 narrow and strait ? 
 
 Is not this confusion of lots also like a 
 misdirection from the bench and an in- 
 justice to society ? If there be a sense 
 of the distinction between goodness and 
 badness in the community, ought it not 
 to receive the support and sanctions of 
 the Eternal ? Do we not as nations turn 
 to history and read with relish the downfall
 
 122 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 of iniquity, and the victory of righteousness ? 
 Are we not in social life ever on the alert for 
 convincing illustrations of that unseen power 
 which shapes human life according to the law 
 written in our conscience ? What a wanton 
 blow to our poor perplexed consciences to 
 see a despicable person, whose hand we 
 would not take in the way of friendship, 
 selected for a crown ; and a saint, who has 
 been an inspiration to us in the conflict of 
 the soul, allotted a cross ! Can our common- 
 wealth be blamed if it follow the lead of 
 Providence and set rascals on high and hold 
 the children of the kingdom in scorn ? 
 
 So it comes to pass that we begin by being 
 concerned about good men, and end by being 
 concerned about God. Is He also careless 
 whether one choose the higher or lower way, 
 whether he feed or mortify his evil self? 
 Are fools and cowards, vain and proud 
 persons, the same to Him as the men of the 
 Beatitudes ? This is a very serious question, 
 vital and final. If God be on the right side, 
 then there is not a good man anywhere who
 
 PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES 123 
 
 will not hold up his head : if God goes over 
 to the enemy, then it seems no use that the 
 rest of us continue the fight. Let us fling 
 away our scruples and join in the general 
 scramble. Of course we know what God 
 has said : His words are in the Law of Moses 
 and in the Sermon on the Mount ; they are 
 graven on our hearts. We also see what 
 God does, and His deeds and His words do 
 not correspond. This is the problem of 
 Providence, and it is not light. 
 
 We ought carefully to remember, first 
 of all, that Providence has not finished 
 its work with those two men and their 
 affairs. It is at the foot of the page the 
 figures are added, and till the columns are 
 filled up no one can say whether the debtor 
 or creditor side has the advantage. Life has 
 many surprises, and some of them are very 
 cheering. Knaves come oftentimes to shame 
 and beggary much to the relief of society : 
 just men suddenly win their rights to every 
 one's delight. Wickedness may succeed to- 
 day and to-morrow, and be made a hissing
 
 124 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and a reproach the third day. Honour may 
 be set in the pillory and be pelted by the 
 rascal multitude for a day and be clothed in 
 purple and borne to her throne at eve of sun. 
 And if this happy event come not to pass in 
 our time, then the figures will be carried over 
 the page and the balance will be struck on 
 the other side. Dives and Lazarus in this 
 world may seem an argument against Provi- 
 dence : the argument has to be modified 
 when you meet the two men in the next 
 world. God has an infinite patience, and 
 does not make haste . it will be soon enough 
 to judge His ways when they are complete. 
 Is it not also our misfortune to be dazzled 
 by the glitter of this world and to identify 
 the rewards of God with material prosperity ? 
 If one be rich and increased in goods, if he 
 hold high station in church or state, then is 
 it not evident that God has blessed him ? 
 If one live in a small house and his name be 
 not known two streets away, then surely God 
 has not blessed him. Could any standard 
 be more shallow, deceptive, unbelieving, un-
 
 PERPLEXING PROVIDENCES 125 
 
 godly? It would seem as if the New Testa- 
 ment had never been written and Jesus had 
 never lived in Nazareth ! If the teaching of 
 Jesus goes for anything, worldly success is no 
 sign of divine approval, but is rather a very 
 trying discipline; hardship is no evidence 
 that God is disowning a man, but, maybe 
 the most convincing gift of His fatherly love. 
 Joseph of Arimathea was no dearer to Christ 
 than St. John, and although Nero lived in a 
 palace and wore the purple, while St. Paul 
 was chained to a soldier and imprisoned in 
 the barracks, the Apostle had not been 
 willing to change with the Emperor. When 
 God is pleased and wishes to bless the men 
 He loves, His hands have other gifts than 
 silver and gold. 
 
 It is more than probable, moreover, that 
 the accounts are being squared here and now, 
 but that our eyes are holden. Is it absolutely 
 certain that our Dives rejoices as one on 
 whom God's face is shining ? What of the 
 reprobation of good men, the gnawing 
 misery of self-contempt, the conscious
 
 126 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 impoverishment of the soul, the haunting 
 dread of the future ? Are there none who 
 would give all they have won by years of 
 scheming and self-degradation for a quiet 
 conscience and a good character? Does it 
 go without saying that our Lazarus is miser- 
 able because he is not clothed in fine linen 
 and does not dine sumptuously every day ? 
 May he not have his own consolations? 
 Surely it is no mean compensation for a severe 
 life and narrow circumstances to be able 
 to look every man in the face, to have the 
 loyal friendship of six honest men, to leave 
 an unstained name as the heritage of his 
 children, to hear God say in the stillness of 
 his soul : ' Well done, My son.'
 
 THE WORLD-SORROW 
 
 \ 
 
 IT must seem to detached minds a very 
 work of perfection, that while each of us has 
 to bear his own burden, certain people 
 cannot be content without also adding the 
 burden of the world, and tasting a double 
 share of sorrow. No one, however, may 
 judge this sorrow to be light or fantastic, for 
 this were to shut his eyes to facts and to 
 deny a conspicuous trend of present-day 
 thought. Many strong thinkers have sorrow- 
 fully abandoned the idea of divine govern- 
 ment, some ordinary folk have lost the 
 comfort of religious faith, hot heads have 
 preached the 'Red Terror,' kind hearts 
 have thrown away their enthusiasm on 
 impossible schemes, young people have 
 
 127
 
 128 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 committed suicide because the creation 
 'groaneth and travaileth in pain.' Our 
 fathers quarrelled with their neighbours and 
 argued themselves into madness over meta- 
 physical mysteries, such as the sovereignty 
 of God. But a large number of serious 
 people are chiefly concerned to-day about 
 the problems : ' Is there any Heaven beyond 
 the grave ? ' and ' Why are so many of our 
 brethren living in Hell this side of the 
 grave ? ' 
 
 No one can read a newspaper without 
 meeting many horrors, and having his 
 optimism very rudely shattered. In Africa, 
 English troops shoot down savages with 
 arms of scientific precision ; in Asia, 
 Mohammedans butcher Christians with 
 every circumstance of brutal barbarity ; 
 in America white mobs burn negroes to 
 death ; /m Europe armed hosts wait the 
 signal for war. i Rich people grow richer 
 and more luxurious, flaunting their extrava- 
 gances, their insolences, their vices in face of 
 the world ; poor people herded together in
 
 THE WORLD-SORROW 129 
 
 great cities grow more discontented and 
 bitter in their squalor and poverty. The 
 ancient fear of God, with reverence, loyalty, 
 and purity, seems to be almost dead, and a 
 hundred signs go to prove that pleasure 
 is fast becoming our God. In spite of a 
 growing humanitarianism gross outrages 
 are still perpetrated on dumb animals, on 
 helpless women, on innocent children. 
 What must be the sum of one day's misery 
 over the world ! 
 
 1 Perpetual meanings from the troubled sea 
 Of human thought, and wails from the vexed wind 
 Of mortal feeling, fill our life's wide air.' 
 
 Times there are when we decline to 
 remember this Inferno and refuse to look 
 over its brink. We are disgusted and 
 offended by any reference to its tragedy, 
 and would prefer that it should be discreetly 
 covered from sight. The news from this far 
 country hinders our full enjoyment in the 
 Father's house. It comes between us and 
 our ease, so that we cannot laugh and talk 
 and eat and sleep so pleasantly, with such 
 I
 
 130 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 pictures forced on our eyes, with such stories 
 in our minds. Certainly the chronicles of 
 life, either on battle-fields or east-ends, are 
 not appetising or agreeable reading ; but 
 the reason why we shrink from reading 
 them is not our sensitive tender-heartedness 
 but our fastidious selfishness. If such 
 wickedness is being done and such agony 
 being endured, it is right and necessary that 
 we should know, and cowardly if we refuse 
 to know. He is less than human, to say 
 nothing of Christian, who can walk the 
 streets of one of our cities at midnight, or 
 read the reports from the consuls in Armenia 
 without having his heart wrung. 
 
 Various questions force themselves upon 
 the most sluggish mind beneath the shadow 
 of this Gethsemane, and the deepest has to 
 do with God. We are driven past the 
 victim and the oppressor, past laws and 
 governments, to the source of power and 
 order. Where is God, what is He doing, 
 how does He feel about this horror? If one 
 of us had the authority, would he not in one
 
 THE WORLD-SORROW 131 
 
 hour bring this immense misery to an end ? 
 And One has almighty and supreme au- 
 thority. Why does He make no sign? 
 Goaded and maddened by the contradiction 
 of the situation the love of God, and the 
 sorrow of men, earnest and reverent minds 
 are driven to abandon one side or the other, 
 and since none can deny the sorrow they 
 give up the love. Which means giving up 
 God, for it were better to believe in no God 
 than in a cruel or indifferent God who 
 would not lift a hand although the world 
 were filled with blood and tears. People 
 who cannot believe in a greater devil are not 
 to be counted heretics ; their unbelief is a 
 tribute to the honour of God. The worst 
 heretics are those who have no difficulty 
 about the government of the world because 
 they have comfortable homes and have 
 suffered no wrongs. Their faith is not 
 religion, it is only Pharisaism and selfishness. 
 This fact of world-suffering is perhaps our 
 darkest problem, and it cannot be faced 
 without touching another and earlier. Some-
 
 132 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 thing goes before suffering, and that is sin ; 
 and it is amazing that we make so much of 
 the one and think so little of the other. No 
 doubt there are people in this world who 
 suffer without having sinned the vicarious 
 victims of the race ; but it still remains true 
 that if men had obeyed the Law of Right- 
 eousness written in their hearts, this world 
 had not been a Gehenna. Were men to 
 keep Christ's commandment of love, there is 
 hardly any form of human misery that 
 would not be ended in two generations. It 
 is, therefore, missing the mark to conclude 
 that this world is misgoverned unless one be 
 sure that the government has been obeyed, 
 and as a matter of fact we all know very 
 well that the opposite has been the case. 
 Every one does more or less what he ought 
 not to do, and comes into collision with law 
 and so his fingers and other people's are 
 burned. The punishment is severe ; but 
 then that does not prove that the world is 
 an anarchy, it rather proves a very just and 
 strong government.
 
 THE WORLD-SORROW 133 
 
 It may of course be urged that this only 
 pushes the difficulty a stage farther back 
 and raises the hopeless question : Why 
 God permitted evil. Here the most daring 
 speculator gets beyond his depth and is 
 certain to be carried away. We can only be 
 clear on one point, that liberty of choice 
 implies the possibility of choosing wrong 
 and that liberty of choice is essential to the 
 formation of character. There is no danger 
 that a slave should wander from home, for 
 ere he got any distance he had been caught 
 and brought back. Slaves can be shackled 
 and confined. They are saved from becom- 
 ing prodigals, but under this regime they 
 can never grow into men ; they will remain 
 undeveloped, weakly, neutral, neither good 
 nor evil, mere human chattels. It is the 
 glory of a son that he is free ; it is his 
 perilous privilege to go astray. As a free 
 man he departs into the far country and 
 plays the fool. So it comes to pass that he 
 suffers desperately, and comes back in 
 hunger and rags. When he does return it
 
 134 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 will not be as he went out, but wiser, 
 stronger, better in nature. 
 
 If the end of Providence were to secure 
 this race in a garden of Eden, lapped round 
 with comfort where no one should ever taste 
 hunger or pain or loss, then let it be freely 
 granted that this world is a conspicuous 
 failure. It is so badly arranged and so 
 loosely governed that it would bring scandal 
 on a human monarch. Things are so much 
 out of joint that we are obliged to seek for 
 another working theory of life than the 
 garden one, and we find it in the New 
 Testament. Jesus and His Apostles teach 
 that the supreme success of life is not to 
 escape pain but to lay hold on righteous- 
 ness, not to possess but to be holy, not to 
 get things from God but to be like God. 
 They were ever bidding Christians beware 
 of ease, ever rousing them to surrender and 
 sacrifice. They never complained of their 
 own hard lot, but rather considered that it 
 was gain. Winds blowing off the snow 
 breed hardy men, and fierce seas breaking
 
 THE WORLD-SORROW 135 
 
 on rocky coasts make skilful seamen ; 
 and if the mind of God was to compel 
 this race up the arduous road that leads to 
 perfection, our dark experience is an open 
 secret 
 
 It is a shallow optimism that would take 
 a rose-coloured view of the world, whose 
 moan ought ever to be in our ears. It is an 
 inexcusable pessimism that denies the pro- 
 gress of the race with the centuries. To- 
 day there are wars at a time and in places ; 
 once it was war at all times and every- 
 where. To-day so many women are the 
 victims of man's sin ; once all women were 
 his slaves. To-day a massacre fires our 
 blood ; once it was an ordinary event. To- 
 day the poor are at least helped ; once they 
 were left to perish. The agony of one age 
 is the birth of a better life for its child, and 
 every martyr gains some good for those 
 following. It is a ghastly struggle any way 
 one looks at it, but it is not meaningless nor 
 fruitless. The day breaks slowly, and the 
 sun as yet hardly pierces through the banks
 
 136 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 of black cloud, but the East is glowing and 
 the darkest is past. 
 
 Above all, it ought to be a strong con- 
 solation to every one, bitter and perplexed 
 about the sorrow of the race, that God is its 
 partaker. Whatever might be His wise and 
 gracious purpose, and however necessary 
 and proper might be His means of fulfilling 
 it, it were still a trial to faith to imagine 
 Him watching from a distance and a place 
 of peace this hurly-burly of sin and pain 
 and shame and despair. It is another thing 
 when He comes through Jesus His Son into 
 the midst of the battle, and Himself receives 
 its most cruel wounds, when down the ages 
 He is touched with the feeling of our in- 
 firmities, and in the midst of the Throne 
 there is a Lamb as He once was slain. 
 There is hope and strength in this re- 
 membrance that the sorrow of the world is 
 the sorrow of God, and the Redeemer of the 
 world is God Himself.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL 
 SUFFERING 
 
 WHEN Jesus' disciples were one day arrested 
 by the sight of a blind man sitting in his 
 pathetic helplessness at the door of God's 
 Temple, and asked the Master the meaning 
 of his calamity, they touched a problem 
 which is fresh in our day, and which has 
 ever in it the blood of the human heart. 
 Every city is studded with hospitals, where 
 hundreds have begun to suffer or have been 
 suffering long. No inconsiderable number 
 of one's acquaintance have never known the 
 joy of full health, but are daily contending 
 against some secret weakness. In our own 
 family there may be a member cut off from 
 the activities of life, who the day long is 
 
 187
 
 138 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 wearying for night, and all night is watching 
 for the dawn. What does this calamity mean ? 
 Surely it is not natural that men and women 
 and little children should be blind, or 
 maimed, or paralysed, or in any way crippled. 
 Rather, people ought to be strong and buoy- 
 ant, able for all the labour and pleasures of 
 life. Why should a certain proportion of the 
 race be called forth to live in Gethsemane ? 
 This is a question on which, for his own or 
 his brethren's sake, one longs for light. 
 
 Various answers may be given, and each 
 one may satisfy some mind. It can be 
 urged, for instance, that there is no problem, 
 because a problem means a difficult prin- 
 ciple which can be solved, but this matter 
 of physical suffering is an accident. Until 
 the delicate processes of nature and the 
 complicated activity of human life perform 
 their parts with unerring accuracy, there 
 will be failures and calamities. Nature is 
 a huge and intricate machine, from which 
 each person is thrown off like a piece of 
 cloth from a loom. We watch the whirling
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 139 
 
 wheels and flying shuttles with some under- 
 standing of the construction, but with no 
 power of interference. A wheel drags ever 
 so slightly, a thread has a rough edge any 
 slight flaw and a section of the web is 
 damaged. So one of us begins life at a 
 disadvantage, and this can only be avoided 
 by a series of miracles going back, say, a 
 century. Some day a signalman, being 
 over-worked or out of sorts, pulls the wrong 
 handle and a train is wrecked, with physical 
 consequences which may last for two genera- 
 tions. A child not yet born will be a cripple 
 for life, but nothing could have saved that 
 child save miraculous interference in that 
 signal-box. And God is not prodigal of 
 miracles, even to avert catastrophes. His 
 providence comes in later to utilise them for 
 material ends ; His grace sanctifies them to 
 spiritual issues. Really it is not wonderful, 
 considering how fine and sensitive the eye 
 is, that here and there a man is blind ; it is 
 amazing that with this exception every per- 
 son sees.
 
 HO THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 Or it may be pointed out with irresistible 
 force that suffering can be traced, often at a 
 long interval, in some cases to sin, and that 
 is simply one of the wholesome sanctions 
 of law. We are firmly convinced that we 
 live in a moral universe, and by that we 
 mean in a state where it will be made 
 pleasant to do what is right, and very un- 
 pleasant to do what is wrong, at least in 
 physical affairs. If one play the fool and 
 slap Nature in the face, that power will take 
 up the quarrel and pursue it to the end with 
 the man and his descendants till she has 
 obtained complete satisfaction. If one make 
 a covenant with Nature and keep her laws 
 loyally, this power will remember him for 
 good, and his children after him, opening 
 her hand and blessing them with health and 
 strength. With her saving judgments and 
 her abundant mercies, Nature fences up the 
 way of life that we may be induced to walk 
 therein with steadfast step. And if any one 
 break through the hedge, it is good that he 
 suffer ; and if it be that its actual trans-
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 141 
 
 gressor do not pay all the debt, but that the 
 innocent must share his liability, this is only 
 the inevitable consequence of the solidarity 
 of the family and the race. None can 
 interfere between the sinner and his penalty, 
 and we can even see that it is well none 
 should, for in so far as one accepts his 
 chastisement with a right mind the pain 
 leaves peace behind. 
 
 One also recognises that suffering is a 
 choice instrument for shaping character, and 
 that without its touch the most delicate 
 chasing on the vessel would be impossible. 
 It is an actual pleasure to look at a perfectly 
 healthy man, who sleeps without a dream 
 and works without fatigue, whose blood is 
 clean, and whose vitality is inexhaustible. 
 He is excellent company for other strong 
 men a buoyant, optimistic, victorious 
 nature but he has his limitations. It is 
 not easy for the preacher of Christ's Evangel 
 to reach this man, for he is entrenched in his 
 fortunate experiences and good-humoured 
 contentment. He is glad to know that there
 
 142 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 are promises for broken-down people, but as 
 things have gone well with him they make 
 no impression on his soul. The next world 
 will be remarkable if it excel this present 
 state, which has been excellently arranged 
 and entirely satisfactory. No doubt the soul 
 is superior to the body ; but at the same 
 time he cannot forget that his body has 
 served him perfectly. His unshaken and 
 exuberant health leaves him invulnerable 
 against every spiritual appeal. It is not to 
 this Samson that the vision of the unseen 
 comes, but to St. Paul with his perpetual 
 tormenting thorn, to St. John cast as a dry 
 seaweed on the shore of Patmos. When 
 one wants to hear the secret things of God, 
 or to delight one's eyes with the finer shades 
 of grace, he leaves the market-place and 
 visits some one who wrestles daily with 
 cruel pain and has come to know death as 
 a familiar friend. Without the last touch of 
 pain certain natures had never come to their 
 perfect sweetness and autumn colour. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that without the
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 143 
 
 stimulus of suffering the Race had never 
 started on its upward career. When the 
 early physical processes had done their work 
 and man appeared as an animal with the 
 soul inbreathed by God Himself, he was, 
 morals apart, simply a savage, naked, idle, 
 ignorant, useless. As soon as he was cast 
 forth from Eden, where he had been saved 
 from exertion, and set himself to work, he 
 began to rise, and the compelling force was 
 the prick of hunger. The fair house of 
 human achievement contains now many 
 treasures of letters and art, but its founda- 
 tions were the hard and inevitable struggle 
 for bread. First the rough hoe, and after- 
 wards the lyre, the pen, and the brush. If a 
 vagabond of the city is ever to be civilised, 
 he must first of all learn to work, and the 
 one certain persuasive is hunger. When 
 this fiercest of all pangs seizes him, he will 
 bestir himself, and so soon as he puts his 
 foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, he has 
 started on the right way, and either he or 
 his children may reach the top some day.
 
 144 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 Pain is the spur which drives the Race 
 along its ordered path of progress. 
 
 All those uses and benefits of pain are, 
 however, open to two criticisms. Some of 
 them are ethical but partial in their opera- 
 tions, as, for instance, invalidism, which 
 purifies one person and hardens another; 
 others are universal but not ethical, as, for 
 instance, the action of hunger. One is 
 therefore moved to seek about for some end 
 of pain which will affect men generally and 
 ethically, and in the search this incident 
 comes under his notice. A congregation 
 made up of well-to-do and easy-going people 
 whom the preacher has sought to move to 
 the pity and service of their fellow-creatures, 
 as, he fears, in vain, is coming out of church. 
 Just as they emerge from the church a runa- 
 way horse knocks down and tramples upon 
 a young child. She is only a child of the 
 city, nameless and not lovely, who has been 
 in the park, and was trudging home with a 
 few buttercups in her hand. Her misery and, 
 suffering are nothing compared with the vast
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 145 
 
 spiritual deprivations of the world which the 
 preacher has laboured. It does not matter : 
 in such circumstances people do not criticise 
 nor calculate. A little maid has been hurt, 
 and her calamity conquers the heart. Men 
 are instantly shaken out of their composure 
 and rush to her aid; women forget their 
 finery and wipe away the blood. A whole 
 company are of a sudden delivered from their 
 selfishness and inspired with human interest. 
 Every sin pride, vanity, hardness, envy is 
 suspended ; every virtue love, sacrifice, 
 gentleness, humility is called into exercise. 
 What could not be done by the eloquence 
 of the preacher was accomplished by the suf- 
 fering of the child. A crowd of ordinary 
 people has been suddenly raised to practical 
 sainthood by a stroke. 
 
 The same effect is produced upon a con- 
 gregation on Hospital Sunday in an English 
 city. Where the subject of the sermon is 
 dogma or exposition the chances are that 
 the audience will be more or less bored or 
 divided ; if the plea be for missions, the 
 K
 
 146 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 hearers may have objections on principle or 
 detail. Let the preacher put the case of 
 suffering before their imagination, and a 
 congregation is at once simply waiting and 
 longing for the opportunity to give ; so that 
 a deft orator, seeing his jury at fever-heat 
 when he has not yet completed his argument, 
 will close his speaking and take his verdict. 
 People of every creed and no creed meet 
 round the suffering and are nearer to one 
 another and to goodness than at any other 
 time in their lives. Jealousy and bigotry, 
 the most unconquerable of sins, together 
 with every other evil work, are vanquished 
 and held for a time in subjection by com- 
 passion and sympathy. 
 
 Such conspicuous and undeniable incidents 
 of daily life suggest that one at least of the 
 ends of suffering is not the effect on the 
 sufferer, but on the world ; that one at least 
 of the methods of saving the world is the 
 spectacle of suffering. We can also detect 
 the principle which lies beneath the means 
 and gives their particular application. If
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 147 
 
 sin be indeed the constant and unscrupulous 
 preference of one's self before the interest of 
 every human being, and the consequence of 
 this habitual selfishness an utter and hopeless 
 hardness, then more than half the battle 
 gained will be when the individual is shaken 
 off his self-centre and moved to the service 
 of others. As soon as the lowest nature has 
 forgotten its own desires and even for five 
 minutes has lived for another, the grip of sin 
 has been loosened and the work of religion 
 has begun. And it were difficult to name 
 any influence which so swiftly and effectually 
 allures one out of self and so warms the 
 blood with generous emotions as the appeal 
 of Pain. 
 
 If Pain be indeed fulfilling this high 
 purpose, it will be easy to accumulate 
 instances, and the first can be found in our 
 homes. It is a dark dispensation of Pro- 
 vidence that a tender and gentle woman, a 
 wife and mother, should be nailed, as it were, 
 to a cross for ten years ; but when you turn 
 from this martyr to her household there is
 
 148 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 light. Her husband, quite a commonplace 
 man once, has been redeemed from coarse- 
 ness of soul, and has attained to the know- 
 ledge of deep mysteries of life ; her sons 
 have escaped the unconscious selfishness of 
 youth, and have learned the habit of 
 chivalrous service ; her daughters have been 
 deepened in character and have been lifted 
 above a hundred petty foolishnesses by the 
 sight of that martyrdom. Neighbouring 
 households have not suffered, so they are 
 counted fortunate ; neither have they such 
 delicate sensibility, such spiritual insight, 
 such ingenuity of sacrifice, such an atmo- 
 sphere of love, such a depth of peace. For 
 the cross has been set up in this household, 
 and they have lived under its life-giving 
 shadow. 
 
 Among the various callings there is one 
 which seems to confer a singular elevation 
 and winsomeness of character. Its members 
 have a firmer hold on the love of the people 
 than any other body of men, and they have 
 won their just and enviable esteem by a
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 149 
 
 habit of unparalleled self-sacrifice. No one 
 serves his fellows at greater cost to himself, 
 or with a more absolute disregard of himself, 
 than a physician. If any one, indeed, has 
 fulfilled the Sermon on the Mount, and 
 exhibited the very spirit of Christ in action, 
 it is this man. Yet how few have been his 
 religious privileges, who is largely cut off 
 from the Word and Sfccrament, who labours 
 while others worship, and is apt to be beset 
 by various trials of faith ? Is it not evident 
 that he must enjoy some powerful compensa- 
 tion and that some influence atones to him 
 for what sanctifies others and he has lost? 
 And is it not certain that this fine influence 
 must be the contact with suffering from day 
 to day, till under the necessary composure 
 of his manner and a natural repudiation of 
 sentiment his heart has been shaped to pity 
 and his will to service? They who serve 
 unceasingly before the altar of suffering 
 receive their reward. 
 
 This beneficent end of suffering has its 
 chief illustration in the ' Man of Sorrows.'
 
 150 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 It goes without proving, that no one has ever 
 so affected our Race for weal as our Master, 
 and that the spring of this salvation is in 
 Himself. Partly it is His example of holy 
 living, and partly it is His Gospel of Divine 
 Truth, but a white marble Christ had not 
 touched the human heart, nor loosed the 
 bands of sin. It is the Crucified, in the 
 unutterable pathos of His Passion and Death, 
 who has overcome and gotten unto Himself 
 the victory. Because it appears that God 
 also is in the tragedy of life, and in the heart 
 of its mystery. When one enters the dimness 
 of a foreign cathedral, he sees nothing clearly 
 for a while, save that there is a light from 
 the Eastern window, and it is shining over a 
 figure raised high above the choir. As one's 
 eyes grow accustomed to the gloom, he 
 identifies the Crucifix, repeated in every side 
 Chapel, and marks that to this Sufferer all 
 kneel in their trouble, and are comforted. 
 From age to age the shadow hangs heavy 
 on life, and men walk softly in the holy 
 place, but ever the Crucifix faces them, and
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 151 
 
 they are drawn to His feet and goodness by 
 the invitation of the pierced hands. 
 
 Had one lived in Jesus' day and realised 
 His excellence, the Cross would have been 
 an almost insuperable offence to faith. 
 Why should He have had a crown of thorns ? 
 Had the veil been lifted from the future, and 
 had one seen the salvation flowing from the 
 five wounds of the Redeemer, then he had 
 been comforted and content. No one then 
 imagined that through the mystery of the 
 Lord's Passion so great a blessing was to 
 come on all ages, for none had entered into 
 the secret of suffering. To-day we are per- 
 plexed by the Passion, which is not now 
 concentrated like a bitter essence in the Cup 
 of a Divine Person, but distributed in the 
 earthly vessels of ordinary people, and we 
 stand aghast at the lot of the victims. Were 
 our vision purged and power given us to 
 detect spiritual effects, then we would under- 
 stand, and cease to complain. We would 
 see the hard crust of human nature broken 
 up, and the fountains of fine emotion
 
 152 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 unsealed ; the subtle sins which sap the 
 vigour of character eliminated, and the 
 unconscious virtues brought to bloom. 
 Before the widespread, silent, searching 
 appeal of the suffering, each in his appointed 
 place, the heart of the Race grows tender 
 and opens its door to goodness. 
 
 This mission of Pain may well be a quick 
 consolation unto them who are its victims. 
 They mourn at times that they are refused 
 a share of the labour of life, and are laid as 
 a burden on their friends. It appears unto 
 those saints in their patience that they are a 
 reduction on the sum-total of life and a 
 daily drain on human kindness. They make 
 too little of themselves : they do not under- 
 stand that they are one of the potent forces 
 of salvation. What no ordinary means of 
 Grace has been able to do for members of 
 their household and a circle beyond, they 
 have wrought. From beds of weariness 
 as from a Cross they have done mighty 
 works, and in weakness they have been 
 more eloquent than the voices of preachers
 
 PERSONAL SUFFERING 153 
 
 in a public place. To-day they are broken 
 in body, so that friends have to lift the 
 cup to their lips ; by and by they will slip 
 the body of humiliation, and they will 
 need strong arms in that day to carry their 
 reward. They have gone forth weeping, and 
 sowed their very life in the cold and windy 
 springtime : they will return rejoicing, and 
 they will be bowed down once more, but now 
 beneath the golden burden of their sheaves. 
 With their Lord they also have seen of the 
 travail of their souls, and are satisfied. By 
 His Grace and in their measure they have 
 filled up that which was behind of the 
 afflictions of Christ
 
 DEATH 
 
 DEATH can be the matter only of a moment, 
 yet it casts its long shadow over a whole 
 life. In death we shall have less to do than 
 in any other affair, yet it is never long absent 
 from our thoughts. No one long ignores 
 this event in his mind ; each man takes up 
 his own attitude to the last act. Some 
 accept it as a dark mystery which we cannot 
 pierce, and about which it is vain to speculate, 
 as the Stoic who in the Roman monuments 
 holds his wife by the hand and bids her 
 farewell without tears and without hope. 
 Some dread it as an unavoidable catastrophe, 
 which is so far as may be put out of sight 
 and speech, as that unspeakable Louis in 
 whose presence one mentioned death at his 
 
 151
 
 DEATH 155 
 
 peril, from whose eyes it was hidden by the 
 drapery of foul licence. What the average 
 Christian thinks, one can only guess from his 
 tone as he touches on the end, from his 
 habits as he mourns his departed. One fears 
 that his idea of death is as much pagan as 
 Christian, and certainly it seldom rises to the 
 height of faith, as seen in the letters of 
 St. Paul, in which it is counted along with 
 life as one of the Christian's possessions, 
 or in the experience of those triumphant 
 followers of the Lord who wore white as 
 they buried another martyr. 
 
 According to the classical idea of St. Paul 
 death was first of all another name for 
 rest. For many a long year the apostle 
 had tabernacled in a body of humiliation, 
 which was tortured by disease a ' thorn in 
 the flesh' and wounded by persecutions, 
 'the marks of the Lord Jesus.' He was 
 weary with endless and toilsome journeys by 
 land and sea, through cold and heat, ever 
 homeless, sometimes houseless. His labours 
 passed measure, who wrought for his living
 
 156 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 as a tent-maker and had on his mind the 
 charge of all the churches. His sensitive 
 soul was also sorely tried by the opposition 
 of enemies, by the treachery of friends, by 
 the ingratitude of his converts. From the 
 beginning of his career, onwards as a 
 Pharisee and a Christian, St. Paul is the 
 very type of hard and high living. Into his 
 day he surely packed the maximum of 
 thought and feeling and work and suffering. 
 It was natural that he should 'feel tired and 
 look kindly towards his release. As a reaper 
 pauses in the heat of the day and imagines 
 his return in the cool of the evening, his 
 heart leaps and he is glad. Men who have 
 struggled hard and who carry scars do not 
 cling fiercely to life ; they are prepared to 
 die as one is ready to sleep. Sleep was one 
 of the apostolic names for death, full of 
 tenderness and peace, but it must not be 
 understood to mean inaction. It is rest 
 from the weariness and harassment of the 
 present life, it is the entrance into the 
 freedom and buoyancy of the life to come.
 
 DEATH 157 
 
 In the sweetest letter of consolation ever 
 written to a parent on the death of a child, 
 Archbishop Leighton says : ' And is he so 
 quickly laid to rest? Happy he! ... John 
 is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as 
 children used to do, and we are undressing 
 to follow.' Life is a long undressing during 
 which the frailties and faults of our imperfect 
 nature are gradually slipped, and we enter 
 unburdened into the unseen world. As the 
 wrinkles are smoothed from the face of a 
 sufferer by the gentle hand of death, so that 
 the war-worn veteran returns to his youth, 
 so the weariness departs from the soul and 
 it enters into the rest for which amid this 
 struggle we often hunger and thirst. St. Paul, 
 and we keep to him as a typical Chris- 
 tian, regarded his death also as a sacrifice. 
 As a Jewish worshipper poured forth his 
 drink-offering to God, so one day the saint 
 hoped to take his life in his hand and spill 
 it at God's feet. His life had been one pro- 
 longed sacrifice, during which he had given 
 up his home, his friends, his country, his
 
 158 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 reputation, his church. One thing only 
 remained, his cup of life : this ho held also 
 in trust for God, and at the appointed 
 moment he would empty it with joy. His 
 special desire was for the martyr's crown 
 the ambition of all the saints and it was 
 not denied him, for he who for many a year 
 had tasted martyrdom, at last drank his fill 
 of Christ's cup. It would be wrong, however, 
 to conclude that only he who falls by fire or 
 sword offers up his life to God, since sacrifice 
 must depend on the will not on circumstances. 
 When the officers came to take Rutherford, 
 the Scots' saint, before the council and to 
 death, they found him dying, and full of regret 
 that he had missed this honour. ' It was my 
 wish to have glorified God on the scaffold, 
 and I would willingly go with you, but I have 
 received a summons to go where few kings 
 or lords come,' So our brave Scot died on 
 his bed and not in face of the people, but 
 his surrender of himself was a veritable 
 siicrifu-c. Life is made up of innumerable 
 acts, and each has its own moral complexion.
 
 DEATH 159 
 
 If the motive which inspires be self- will then 
 the colour of life is base and squalid ; if 
 devotion to the will of God be the spring of 
 action then is life noble and elevated. And 
 the last and most solemn act in all our life 
 is to die. If as the inevitable will of God 
 appears we repine and rebel, then death will 
 be an act of violence full of indignity and 
 degradation ; if we give welcome to the call 
 of God and go out to meet it, then is death 
 the supreme act of homage and obedience. 
 It is the climax of communion between the 
 soul and God. 
 
 Unto St. Paul death appeared also as a 
 gain, and therein he is comparing it with 
 life. Life is a time of choice, of education, 
 of imperfection, of probation, and allow as 
 we please for the good-will of God and for 
 the Divine grace, there is an element of un- 
 certainty. No vessel sailing so treacherous 
 a sea is safe till it has reached port and cast 
 anchor. One is delighted by the unexpected 
 recoveries of character in his neighbours ; 
 one is cast down by the amazing catastrophes
 
 160 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 of character. If it be the case, as one 
 believes, that no man is hopeless, one is also 
 driven to the conclusion that no man is sure. 
 Some latent weakness may be developed ; 
 some unexpected temptation may be too 
 strong. It becometh every one to be humble 
 and diffident. The unknown possibilities 
 in human nature is a chastening and warning 
 fact which only frivolous and foolhardy 
 people can ignore. No one ever had a more 
 absolute faith in God, none ever followed 
 Christ more closely than St. Paul, and yet 
 he was haunted by the thought that in the 
 end he might be a castaway. It had been 
 an altogether horrible thing if one who had 
 besought men to believe in Christ, and suffer 
 for Christ, should himself deny the Lord and 
 put Him to open shame ; if one who had 
 testified at all times to the excellent glory of 
 the world to come should himself go into 
 darkness. It were, on the other hand, 
 altogether becoming and joyful that St. Paul 
 should come at last to the goal which he saw 
 afar, and receive the crown from his Lord's
 
 DEATH 161 
 
 hands. While he lived this could not be ; 
 death was the moment of final victory, 
 for him therefore, and every sinful man, 
 death was great gain. 
 
 And death was above all to such as St. 
 Paul a meeting with Jesus Christ^ who was 
 the object of his ceaseless faith, the hope of 
 his longing heart. This man did not speculate 
 about heaven where it was, what it was. 
 Nor did he imagine its glory as became a 
 mystic like St John. For him heaven was 
 another name for Christ, the sum of all 
 goodness, the revelation of all perfection. 
 Between him and Christ there had been a 
 long friendship, with many love-passages, 
 which had grown more intimate every year, 
 but had never been completed. St. Paul 
 had heard Christ's voice on the road to 
 Damascus ; he had seen Him in visions ; for 
 brief moments he had visited the third 
 heavens ; but face to face this great Christian 
 had not set eyes on his Master as had St. 
 Peter and St. John. For an unseen Lord he 
 lived, laboured, suffered as none else has ever 
 L
 
 162 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 done. What wonder that St. Paul hungered 
 and thirsted for the day when that dark 
 servitor death would usher him into the 
 unveiled Presence. 
 
 ' That one face, far from vanish, rather grows 
 Or decomposes but to re-compose, 
 Becomes my universe that feels and knows.' 
 
 For this representative Christian to be 
 absent from the body was to be present with 
 the Lord. 
 
 The mystical passion may not rise to this 
 height in ordinary people, but the cloud of 
 death has also for us a silver lining. We 
 have some sense of Christ, and hours when 
 we would go far to see Him in His glory 
 who has loosed the burden of our sins. With 
 Him are our Departed, waiting for the coming 
 of their friends, so that to die is to meet 
 again our mother. If death veils from our 
 eyes this world in which we have lived, and 
 which to most of us has been on the whole 
 a pleasant world, the same hand will unveil 
 the world to come wherein is contained the 
 reality of those things whereof we have ever
 
 DEATH 163 
 
 dreamed. And if death separates us from 
 those with whom we have lived in peace, we 
 shall be in an instant joined to those who 
 have gone before and who as the years pass 
 become the majority. So heaven grows into 
 Home, whereof the door is death.
 
 OUR DEPARTED 
 
 SURELY there is no person of human kind 
 who does not wish to believe that those 
 whom we love and have lost a while are 
 conscious of their friends and are spectators 
 of our lot. It were a peculiar grief to con- 
 clude either that we had been blotted out 
 from their memory or that they had no 
 knowledge of our life. When they leave us 
 and their ship disappears in the west, we 
 recognise and bow before the inevitable 
 order of things : we are also fully aware 
 that this ship will not return after a space, 
 and as reasonable people, we do not linger 
 on the quay in vain regrets, but at once set 
 ourselves to duty with a steadfast heart. It 
 might seem to those not yet initiated into 
 
 1M
 
 OUR DEPARTED 165 
 
 this mystery of sorrow that we had lost 
 little or could forget at will, but this is not 
 the way of the heart. How much the 
 voyagers have taken with them ! What 
 a void they have left ! Gone from our sight 
 and our affairs, they are enshrined in our 
 memory and more than ever are lords of our 
 love. It were an immense consolation to 
 know that they have us in their hearts, and 
 that although they have passed into the 
 other world, yet from their vantage ground 
 they follow us as we pursue our measured 
 way, and that, if we could see, the distant 
 clouds which overhang us are human faces. 
 Is this only a fond imagination ? 
 
 If one goes by reason, and God has surely 
 not given us this noble faculty only to 
 deceive, we may well cherish this con- 
 fidence. It were incredible that the scissors 
 of death, which evidently cuts off this present 
 life and separates a man from his physical 
 environment, should also cut off his memory 
 and isolate him for ever from his dearest 
 interests. When one crosses the dark ocean
 
 166 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and settles on the other side, distance does 
 not obliterate the old world : rather it flings 
 it into relief and endears what is unseen. 
 For the past to be blotted out were to an- 
 nihilate the person, who could no longer say 
 I after this detachment, but would begin life 
 again as another person. Is it not more 
 reasonable as well as more just that the 
 noble souls who imagined, suffered and died 
 in the cause of God, Patriarchs, Prophets, 
 Martyrs, should see the Day of Christ and 
 the victory of righteousness ? And is it not 
 also fitting that a mother who has planned 
 great things for her son and died before 
 they were fulfilled, should behold the answer 
 to her prayers and be satisfied ? This is how 
 it ought to be in a reasonable universe, and 
 this therefore, we conclude, is how it is, 
 unless God intends to put us to confusion. 
 
 This conclusion of reason is confirmed by 
 at least one passage in Holy Scripture, and 
 that is an incident in the life of our Lord. 
 As every one must have noticed, Jesus, while 
 in this world, ever suggested another of
 
 OUR DEPARTED 167 
 
 which He was a native. He was in con- 
 stant touch with the unseen : He was ever 
 under its influence: He responded to its 
 impressions. Angels ministered to Him ; 
 the heavens opened above His head : voices 
 were heard calling Him the Beloved Son 
 of God. If ever the veil between the 
 worlds should be lifted it would be through 
 Him the Chief Saint of Religion and the 
 Sent One of God, the visible link between 
 the worlds. What was to be expected 
 happened in the Transfiguration, when the 
 Lord passed for a brief space into the 
 spiritual sphere and two inhabitants of that 
 sphere came unto the very confines of the 
 physical. One was the Lawgiver of Israel 
 who made a nation of the Hebrews, the 
 other the most typical of all the prophets 
 who sustained that nationality. Two living 
 personages they stood with Jesus, and 
 their conversation had to do not with heaven 
 but with earth, not with their present but 
 with their past As in their day they had 
 thought and toiled only for God's kingdom,
 
 168 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 and had departed before the day of its 
 glory, so all the ages had those patient 
 saints watched its growth and longed for 
 its completion. They spake with Jesus of 
 the Exodus he should accomplish at Jeru- 
 salem. If the two Jewish leaders were 
 still intent on their life-work it may be 
 taken for granted that in their measure 
 others will still pursue the high ends of 
 their past, and that certainly not one 
 who has had a friend on earth will forget 
 him yonder. 
 
 No doubt this belief collides rudely with 
 a certain idea of conventional piety that a 
 person admitted into Heaven will be so ab- 
 sorbed in the contemplation of God, or the 
 celebration of His praise or the enjoyment 
 of his own high estate it may be put one 
 way or another that he will be removed 
 far above former ties and earthly considera- 
 tions. Which sounds plausible and seems 
 beautiful, but if you look into it is not 
 Christian or religious. Suppose that the 
 head of a household fighting with his family
 
 OUR DEPARTED 169 
 
 the hard battle of life and enduring many 
 trials, should emigrate to the new world and 
 there come into great affluence. Would 
 not his first thought, so far as he was a 
 true-hearted man, be of the patient wife and 
 clinging children he had left, and if through 
 any hindrance of circumstances he could 
 not at once share with them his felicity, 
 would he not pursue them with his thoughts 
 and prayers? What piety is that which 
 rests on disloyalty? Is not love the surest 
 evidence of communion with God ? Various 
 heavens have been imagined which do not 
 attract or elevate, but one of sheer selfishness 
 is surely the worst. 
 
 It may, however, be very fairly urged 
 that if the departed live in constant sym- 
 pathy with us in our lower place they must 
 come short of Heaven. If they see our trials 
 and agonies, our afflictions and sorrows, 
 our temptations and sins, or even our fail- 
 ings and weaknesses, to say nothing of our 
 physical dangers and pains, must they not 
 miss the safety and joy of heaven ? Were
 
 i;o THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 it left to our decision, would we not choose 
 rather that our friends should be cut off 
 from all knowledge of us by the thick veil 
 of oblivion than that from their splendid 
 distance and in their high helplessness they 
 should see and suffer ? But are we not too 
 apt to conclude that peace and suffering are 
 inconsistent ? Has the Eternal been secluded 
 from all knowledge of human life during 
 those ages ? Has not the cry of the miser- 
 able been ever in His ears? has not His 
 heart been melted within Him? Was it 
 not on this account that He sent His Son 
 and endured His dying prayer? Did not 
 Christ rise from the dead and sit down on 
 the right hand of the Divine Majesty, and 
 yet does He not share in all the labours 
 and pains of His disciples ? Pity and sym- 
 pathy are not the contradiction of spiritual 
 joy : they are two of its elements. 
 
 We must remind ourselves that the 
 Departed will regard life with other eyes 
 than ours. From our lower standpoint, still 
 in the mists of the valley, suffering seems
 
 OUR DEPARTED 171 
 
 an unmixed calamity, and we had made a 
 world without the possibility of pain or sin. 
 With their clear vision looking from the 
 heights they will not make moan over this 
 Gethsemane with its bitter cryings and 
 bloody sweat. What even we dimly feel to 
 be a good in the midst of our conflict, is to 
 them a perfect and triumphant principle, 
 because they behold the end of all things. 
 They see life whole, not only Abraham's 
 exile, but also Abraham's portion : not only 
 St. Stephen's stones, but also St. Stephen's 
 crown : not only St. Paul's long martyrdom, 
 but also St. Paul's unspeakable reward. 
 From their vantage ground they see the son 
 in the misery of the far country, and again at 
 home a better son. When we are under the 
 sharp knife, they will not complain of Provi- 
 dence, nor be in despair of us, for already we 
 are again healed and strong. Children pity 
 themselves at school, because of the toil and 
 discipline, we of older age envy them and 
 wish we were again at school, that by our 
 patience we might earn richer possessions.
 
 i;2 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 If in this world St. Paul gloried in his 
 afflictions anticipating their peaceable fruits, 
 is he likely to weep over another sinner who 
 agonises to obtain his crown ? 
 
 The conviction that the Departed are not 
 dead, or unconscious, or indifferent to us, 
 their poor relations, but are alive for ever- 
 more, full of activity and constantly mindful 
 of us what may be called the sense of the 
 Departed has various excellent effects. For 
 one thing it invests the unseen world with 
 reality, so that we are not repelled by the 
 thought of an unknown inhospitable foreign 
 shore. Gradually, as we look across, the 
 shadows take form and grow familiar ; we 
 recognise those whom we remember and 
 would wish again to see. They are living 
 there as they did in our homes, they are 
 thinking of us as of old ; they are ready 
 to give us welcome ; they will have much 
 to tell us. And this faith can alone 
 deliver us from vain regrets ; for who has 
 lost a friend and in the hour of reflection 
 has been satisfied with himself? Wherein
 
 OUR DEPARTED 173 
 
 the Departed failed you is forgotten, 
 wherein you failed the Departed is bitterly 
 remembered. Too late, alas, one cannot 
 now ask pardon. If the Departed only 
 could see the tears which have at last burst 
 the barriers of pride, if they only knew the 
 reparation one was making for their sake ! 
 Are they denied one of the chief satis- 
 factions of the soul that those whom we 
 love are not unworthy? If there be joy 
 in the presence of God's angels over the 
 penitent, is there no share for his mother, 
 whose prayers have at last been answered ? 
 It is a pity one cannot get a receipt for the 
 debt he has paid, but let him be sure that it 
 is cancelled. 
 
 And in the witness of the Departed is one 
 of the strong encouragements of life. We 
 need not fear that they will regard us with 
 critical and censorious eyes as we toil and 
 strive ; sometimes succeeding, sometimes 
 failing in this sore conflict They have 
 been of like passions with ourselves : theirs 
 also are now the infinite pity and charity
 
 174 THE POTTER'S WHEEL 
 
 of God. They continually believe in us 
 as does our Lord Christ : they expect 
 noble deeds and holy living of us : they 
 beseech God continually on our behalf. If 
 there be none left on earth to bid us good 
 cheer and sustain our hearts, there be many 
 on the other side, and as we run our ordered 
 course, the Departed lean forward from their 
 high places and stretch out their hands, 
 rejoicing as we slip each weight, and forsake 
 each sin, full of longing till we also reach 
 the goal, and receive the Crown. 
 
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 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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